"What's the problem? Has everybody heard all your jokes?"
"I don't have anything to joke about, Major." Quark gave a deep sigh. "The problem is . . . competition." He spoke the last word with the heartfelt loathing of the true capitalist. "Just about the time you think you have a good thing going—serving the community, mind you—then somebody else conies along to horn in on the action."
"There's another bar on DS9?" Maybe I should go there, thought Kira. This place was beginning to feel a little glum, even to her.
"Of course not. Everybody on the Promenade knows that I'd cut them off at the knees if they tried. No, I'm talking about down on Bajor. My old partner McHogue and thatfancy-shmancy new pleasure city that he's got the Cardassians putting up for him."
Kira held up the data padd. "That's just what I've been looking at. Quite a deal, huh?"
"'Quite a deal,' my back incisors." Quark's glare became even more murderous. "A naked grab at establishing a monopoly, is what I call it—and worse yet, it's not my monopoly! They're taking the bread out of my mouth. . . ." He lapsed into muttering obscure curses, the meaning of which was still apparent.
She couldn't resist needling him further. "I thought Ferengi were in favor of the free-market system."
"Well, sure—but there are limits! This," he sputtered, pointing to the images on the data padd, "this is beyond the bounds of decency! McHogue has whole buildings full of holosuites, all of them wired up with those CI modules of his—you've seen what those do to people."
"I'm proud of you, Quark." She wasn't joking now. "You've developed an actual moral sense."
"I know. . . ." Like a deflating balloon, he sank into the table's empty chair. "I must be getting old." Morosely, he propped the side of his face against one hand. "Outclassed . . . left behind in the dust . . . ready for the scrap heap." Self-pity radiated from him. "Maybe I should just climb aboard one of their shuttles and go down there myself. McHogue can put me in one of his holosuites and take me back to the days when I was young and rapacious."
"They're running shuttles down to this place? This Moagitty, or whatever it's called?"
"Of course. That's where all my customers have gone—or they soon will be."
"I knew the first sections were already up and running, but still . . ." Kira slowly shook her head in disbelief. "I'm amazed Commander Sisko would give them permission to arrange travel right from the station."
"He didn't. McHogue's set up a docking substation within transporter range—they'll beam aboard anyone who asks, and then send them on down to Bajor on one of their own shuttles. What's Sisko going to do about it? He can't refuse people permission to leave the station, if they want to go."
"I suppose not. . . ." She mulled over the Ferengi's information. It presented certain possibilities. Since she had been taken off duty by Sisko, there had been no way that she could requisition one of the station's runabouts—she had been stuck here on DS9. But if McHogue was going to be this obliging . . .
She picked up the data padd from the table and pushed back her own chair. "Don't worry," she told Quark. "I'm sure you've still got what it takes."
"Thanks, Major." Quark busied himself, setting her drink onto his tray and wiping off the table. "It's good to know that one's efforts don't go unappreciated in this universe."
An unpleasantly familiar face was there to greet her.
"Ah, Major Kira." The functionary she had first met at the Severalty Front's headquarters now gave a small bow toward her. "Our last time together was not nearly as cordial as I would have wished it."
The last time she had seen this person, he had been standing over Malen's body, with the weapon that had killed her old friend still in his hand. And the functionary had been smiling in the same humorless, mocking way.
"That was probably my fault," said Kira. "I react poorly to murder."
"Now, that's interesting—so do I." The functionary nodded thoughtfully. "It's fortunate for me that I've only had to deal in, shall we say, political necessities." He gestured toward the other end of the corridor. "Would you care to follow me?"
The other passengers that had come down on the shuttle—a dozen or so, most of whom she recognized from DS9—had been herded in another direction. The ornately engraved doors, several meters high and depicting McHogue as a cordial demigod with arms spread in welcome, had closed and sealed off the landing area. The murmur of the others' voices faded in the distance.
"So I take it that you're my official escort?" Kira glanced at the figure walking beside her. "I'm flattered that you think I deserve the special treatment."
"Oh, we're aware of your having been taken off full duty. Your Commander Sisko seems a bit given to groundless suspicions." The functionary made a dismissive gesture. "That will pass, and you'll be in his good graces once more. For whatever that's worth. And besides—" He turned the malicious smile toward her again. "You're a celebrity in your own right. It's a basic operating principle of an operation such as this, that you have to separate the VIPs from the more . . . common elements."
"How did you know I was going to pay you a visit?"
"Major Kira . . . please. If you hadn't, then we would have had to invite you." He stopped at another door, smaller and without decoration. "This way."
From the corridor, they stepped out onto a curved balustrade, its horizontal arc encompassing an area larger than the Promenade aboard DS9 by several orders of magnitude. At the guardrail, Kira could look down upon a milling crowd of the galaxy's sentient species. They were too far distant to make out as individuals, but they gave off en masse the same aura of mingled excitement and greed that had repelled her before—if anything it was even stronger here than on the Promenade.
"This is just the annex off the transportation area." The functionary pointed to the bays along the sides of the enclosed space; the crowd eddied around and through them like water swirling in a rock-lined stream. "We have centuries of recorded experience to draw upon, going all the way back to Earth itself, on how to design our operations for maximum profit generation. There really is a science to this sort of thing—the psychology of extracting wealth, as it were. You might remember that ancient political maxim about taxation being the art of plucking the most feathers from a domesticated fowl while causing the least amount of squawking. Here, we'd like to think we've transcended that state: we prefer the goose to pull off all his feathers himself and happily present them to us on a plate."
Kira brought her gaze up from the gaming floor. "You wouldn't be making a very successful pitch to tourists with that approach."
"On the contrary, Major. With all due respect, an observation like that only indicates how naive you are in these matters. That's one of the remarkable aspects of the business of satisfying people's innermost desires: the cynicism is on both sides of the equation. What all these people wish for, along with everything else, is a sinister glamour, the thrill of finding co-conspirators in the engineering of their self-destruction. They want to lose themselves in an abyss of vice and corruption; it amuses them to think of themselves fated and damned, rushing to a personal apocalypse. How could the Federation, with its essentially hygienic, problem-solving approach to reality, ever satisfy drives like that? Starfleet is like a torchbearer, bringing enlightenment to every corner of the galaxy—how noble of it. But that light must inevitably create shadows of its own, and those shadows have to go somewhere. Better they should come here to Moagitty, where Bajorans can garner the proceeds."