“Well, I am short,” Quark allowed, “but a lawbreaker? Scurrilous and loutish? And those other things? Please.”
“I’ve observed nothing to suggest the Founder’s description of you is inaccurate.”
“All right,” Quark said, warming to the opportunity to prove Odo something less than a god. “Let’s say that he was right, that I am all those things. You know that Odo was chief of security on the station when he was here, right?”
The Jem’Hadar looked over at Quark now, apparently curious. “Yes,” he said.
“Well, if I’m a lawbreaker, then doesn’t that mean that Odo should have arrested me and put me in prison?” Quark argued. “But here I am, free. Which means either Odo was wrong and I’m not a lawbreaker, or he was right, but he wasn’t a good enough chief of security to catch me. Either way, I’d say that doesn’t make him much of a god.” I should’ve been a Vulcan,Quark thought, dazzled by his own display of logic.
The Jem’Hadar said nothing.
“Well,” Quark said. “All right then.” He started to leave.
“Wait.” To Quark’s surprise, the word sounded more like a request than a command. “The Founders created the Jem’Hadar. Createdthem. We exist by their providence. Is that not a characteristic of divinity?”
“I wouldn’t exist if not for my mother,” Quark said. “I don’t lose sleep over it.”
“But your mother did not create the entire Ferengi species,” the Jem’Hadar said.
“Listen, with enough latinum and the right scientists, you can create just about anybody or anything,” Quark said. “So what?”
The Jem’Hadar said nothing again. Then he turned and paced deeper into the holosuite, his boots kicking up puffs of white sand as he neared the edge of the bluish purple water. Quark, enjoying being able to confound this genetically engineered soldier, walked forward and through the doorway.
The Jem’Hadar stopped and turned back toward him. “What do you most want?” he asked.
“What?” Quark had not expected such a question.
The Jem’Hadar strode back across the beach until he reached Quark. “What is it that you most desire? Wealth?”
Quark laughed, a response combined of amusement and anxiety as he peered up into the Jem’Hadar’s intense eyes. “Wealth,” he confirmed. “Of course.”
“If a Founder chose to, he could become a brick of gold-pressed latinum,” the Jem’Hadar said. “Or ten bricks. Or a thousand.”
“That’s not exactly the same thing as having wealth,” Quark contended. “They couldn’t spend himself.”
The Jem’Hadar stepped around Quark and moved back to the panel inside the doorway. He touched a control, and the scene around them gained substance. The lake began to undulate, the gentle waves nipping at the shore. The crisp smells of vegetation floated through the air, carried along by a caress of breeze. The pacific nature of the holoprogram seemed at odds with the character of the Jem’Hadar. “And why do you spend?” he asked.
Quark shrugged. “To acquire things, of course.”
“But the Founders do not need to acquire anything,” the Jem’Hadar said, moving past Quark again and heading back across the beach toward the water. “The Founders can be anything they wish to be. They are free from the need for wealth, because they already have everything—they already areeverything—in the universe.”
“Yes, but…” But what?Quark wondered, his gaze drifting downward. He had never considered Odo’s nature in quite the way the Jem’Hadar had just described it. Odo had never quite been like that, reveling in all that he could become, although Quark supposed that he could if he chose to. In a sense, the Jem’Hadar was right; Odo could have just about anything he wanted, because he could bejust about anything he wanted. Of course, in all the time Quark had known him, the constable had only wanted three things: to serve the cause of justice, to have Kira love him, and to return to his people, all things that he could not have simply by shifting his form. But then, Odo had nevertheless managed to acquire all of those things. He had meted out justice for years, Kira had come to love him, and he had finally gone back to live with the Founders.
Odo has everything he ever wanted,he thought. The truth of that astounded Quark. Odo was no longer with Kira, of course, but that had been his choice.
“Computer,” the Jem’Hadar said, “begin program.” Quark looked up. He thought that the holoprogram had already been running, but obviously the Jem’Hadar had only activated the setting parameters up until now. At first, Quark detected no change in the holosuite, but then a deep vibration reached his ears. The sound increased in volume, originating somewhere behind the Jem’Hadar. Quark peered out at the surface of the lake and saw a mass of water being displaced, churning upward. As the rumble grew louder, the movement of the water grew more violent. Quark looked at the Jem’Hadar’s face. The soldier was smiling.
The lake bubbled upward in a frenzy. With a crashing sound, the surface broke, and a huge shape burst out of the water. Quark saw a creature out of a nightmare, with a rugged, black hide, two golden, vertical slits for eyes, and a gaping maw that held enormous triangular teeth. The beast bellowed, an ugly, angry cry. The Jem’Hadar turned to face it. Quark turned and raced from the holosuite. Even though this was only a simulation, he had no desire to witness this sort of thing.
Quark headed out across the upper level of the Promenade toward the nearest turbolift. The image of the horrible creature in the holosuite stayed with him only an instant. Odo’s face replaced it in his mind, along with the notion that the constable essentially had acquired everything he had ever wanted. And I can’t get almost anything I want,Quark thought bitterly. Not the moon for which he had always longed, not great monetary wealth, not even much of a business. And he also might have thrown away whatever small chance he might have had with Ro Laren.
But now Quark decided he would do what he had to do to change that.
47
Vaughn took a last sip of water, then sealed the container and set it aside. He stood up, packed his bedroll—the blanket and beacon inside it—and strapped it to his back. He slung both water containers over his shoulder, then started up the side of the hollow in which he had chosen to rest.
At the top of the incline, a roadway stretched away to the left and right. Vaughn had found the road a few hours ago, on the way out of the city. It measured a dozen or so meters across, traveling through the rise and fall of the landscape in a predominantly straight line, directly toward the complex surrounding the source of the pulse. Walking on the even terrain beside the road allowed him to maintain a steady gait, while at the same time putting less strain on him than if he were to move along the harder surface of the road itself.
Vaughn turned left and resumed his journey. A long upgrade lay ahead, the summit about a kilometer away. He slipped his tricorder out of a coat pocket and performed a scan. As he had drawn nearer the site of the pulse, the range of the sensors had decreased dramatically, though the amount of interference from the energy still confirmed that the road continued in the right direction. He closed the tricorder and slid it back into his coat.
Above, the dark sea of clouds gloomed, matching Vaughn’s mindset. Since his encounter in the city with Captain Harriman—or whoever or whatever it had been—he had spent considerable effort conceiving of possible explanations. Time and again, though, his mind would drift from asking questions and searching for answers, to recalling his days with Harriman. Over and over, he had to force his thoughts back to the situation at hand, a problem of focus that did not usually afflict him.
In the end, he figured that the problem broke down simply enough: either that had been Harriman back in the city, or it had not. If it had been Harriman, then how had he come to be here, and why? And why from so long ago? Had there been a reason he had not responded when Vaughn had called to him? Most important, how would this affect the mission to disable the pulse?