He had left the bat and the mitt at school, the one that Mrs. O'Brien ran for all the kids aboard the station. Instead of restricting him to living quarters, Jake's father had made a specific point—an order, really—about him going back there this shift, despite all the stuff that had happened in those creepy holosuites. The bat, with the mitt slung around it, had stood propped up in a corner of the schoolroom for several shifts—Jake couldn't remember how long it had been. That showed how wrapped up he'd gotten in that other world, hanging out with that strange boy with the knife and the cruel smile. He was real glad that was over. Having his father find out about it hadn't been the most pleasant thing in the world, and he had his suspicions about who had snitched on him—on DS9, the discovering and revealing of secrets was pretty much Odo's job. But in his heart, he was grateful for that; he might not have been able to end it, to stop going in there, by himself. And then who knew what might have happened to him, if it had gone on any longer? Dr. Bashir hadn't run all those tests on him just to keep in practice.
"Some people really go for it," mused Nog. "The holosuites and all that. My uncle says he's got some real regular customers. And your dad—he uses one every now and then."
"Yeah, he's got a bunch of old ballplayers programmed into one at Quark's bar. He likes talking to 'em. But they all seem to, like, spit a lot. You know? I guess that's authentic and all, but it's really weird."
They had reached the end of the corridor, to where it opened out to a view above the Promenade. Jake leaned it the rail, looking down at the milling crowd.
"The way I see it," said Jake, "is that it's more important for them. For old guys like my dad, I mean." He had given a lot of thought to the matter, and was still working it out inside his head. "Because it's like going back home for them. They didn't grow up in places like this." Jake gestured at enclosing metal walls and ceilings of the station. "My dad remembers all that stuff, trees and grass and everything But I don't." He fell silent for a moment, thinking about the first time he had gone with his father inside one of the holosuites—he couldn't remember how old he was then; it hadn't been here aboard DS9—and the difference he'd been able to discern, even at that age, between the way his father had looked around at the re-created summery world and how strange it had seemed to him. Or maybe not strange, or at least not any more so than the zillion other places he'd already seen, real worlds and Starfleet vessels and Federation outposts that he had stuffed inside his own personal memory bank. Could he help it if a holosuite's simulation of Earth didn't punch his buttons the same way it did for his father? Though he'd been smart and had kept his mouth shut about it, except for saying how great it was—he knew how much it all meant to his dad. He wouldn't have wanted to hurt his feelings.
"You're probably right." Nog stood beside him at the rail. "Though from what Uncle Quark told me, a lot of his customers go into his holosuites just to . . . you know . . . have sex. Then again, when you look at some of his customers, you gotta figure that's the only way they could."
Jake knew that his friend had inherited a wide streak of mercantile cynicism from his Ferengi genetics; the family traits were bound to show up sooner or later.
"There'd be some things about it I'd miss, though. If there weren't any holosuites." He turned his back to the Promenade view and weighed the wooden bat in both his hands. "Playing all that baseball—that was kinda fun." He hadn't yet decided whether it was worth going back in just for the sake of a game.
"Why do you need a holosuite to do that?"
"Come on." He looked at Nog in exasperation. "You need a lot of room to play baseball. That's the main thing." He used the bat to point to the closest bolted panels and girders. "We're just a little cramped for open space here, remember?"
"Not in the loading docks, out by the pylons—they're huge. They bring those freight containers big as whole ships in there."
"Oh sure—and they'd be happy to let me set up a baseball diamond right in the middle of the cranes and all that other heavy action." Jake rolled his eyes upward. "I thought you Ferengi were supposed to be so smart."
"Yeah, well, you're the son of the station's commander, aren't you?" Nog poked him in the arm. "Why not pull a little rank?"
Jake slowly shook his head. "You're not even as smart as I thought you were a moment ago. Believe me, it just doesn't work that way around here. Not with my dad, at least."
"So? Then we'll just have to deal with conditions as we find them—as my uncle would say. What's there to the game, anyway, except hitting the ball and running around the bases? We could do that much right here." Nog looked over the area surrounding them. "How many bases did you say there were?"
"Four. First, second, third and home plate. That's why it's called a diamond."
"Maybe we better make it a triangle, then; kind of a long skinny one." Nog pointed down the length of the corridor. "Okay, right there between those service panels on either—we'll make that home." He turned, tracing an imaginary line with his fingertip. "That girder is first base, and the vent grid's second. How's that sound?"
"Maybe you're not so dumb, after all." The notion had never even occurred to Jake. If you couldn't squeeze a diamond in, and you couldn't change the space, then change the diamond. Simple. As he thought about it, he remembered his father telling him about other games, street games, that were like baseball—hitting and running—but not exactly; you didn't even need a bat for them, just a sawn-off broom handle. That's what you were supposed to do: use whatever you had. He nodded as he looked around the improvised field. "Yeah, that might be all right. . . ."
They worked out a few quick rules. No pitcher—it would have been difficult to manage, anyway, with just the two of them—and hits off the corridor's walls weren't fouls, but bank shots.
Nog backed up toward the area's guardrail. For a moment as Jake rubbed his thumb across the baseball's stitches, the sick and dizzy feeling surged over him again, the same one he got when he didn't stop himself from thinking about the holosuite and some of the things inside it. The metal bulkheads and stanchions of DS9 wavered in his sight, as if they were somehow unreal. He had to squeeze his eyes shut to hold everything in place.
"Hey, come on!" Nog's shout seemed to come from somewhere else, another world. "What're you waiting for?"
He gripped the ball tighter. It was real, he knew; he'd told himself that before. Not like the things in the holosuite. Everything there had always been slightly . . . off. Like they were out of focus, even when they were sharp in his sight and solid in his hand; even when he had been scared of them. Things in the holosuite were always trying to be real. They came out of nowhere and read your mind, and then tried to become the things they found in there. But they never got it exactly right. He knew that now. He could tell the difference. Real stuff—the whole real universe—waited for you to deal with it, on its own terms.
Jake opened his eyes. The station's metal bulkheads looked solid and hard once more. "Okay," he said. "Comin' at ya." He tossed the ball up, then got both hands on the bat and swung.
He connected harder than he had intended—the feel of the bat in his grip had pumped adrenaline into his system. With a sharp crack, the ball flew the length of the corridor. For a moment, Jake traced the arcing course—it leveled off a centimeter shy of brushing the ceiling—then dropped his gaze to watch Nog backpedaling, hands awkwardly raised above his head to try making the catch. Jake's smile changed to an expression of alarm when he saw how far away Nog had gotten.