Odo glanced at the empty tables and booths. "I'm afraid our host is suffering the effects of a severe drop in his business—hence the lugubrious expression. Those bent on pleasure seem to find more to their liking in Moagitty, on the surface of Bajor."
The explanation prompted an amazed head shake from O'Brien. "You'd hardly believe seeing people turned into murderers would make for successful advertising."
"On the contrary. In this case, the expectations of a 'cop,' as you put it, are more in line with reality. I'm not surprised that the jaded and bored, in search of new and exotic stimuli, would be attracted to an enterprise that virtually guarantees the ultimate in self-destruction."
"There's a cheerful thought." O'Brien had already knocked back half of his synthale.
"You should take a look at the transit logs. Now that McHogue has his operation completely up and running, the traffic passing through this sector and going straight on to Bajor has gone from virtually zero to the point where it's causing some serious navigational difficulties. The weather that the planet is undergoing is only compounding the problem of offworld vessels stacking up outside the atmosphere. Though in the long run, there's no amount of hurricanes that will keep McHogue's would-be customers from reaching their destination."
"Bit of divine retribution there." The last of the synthale went down O'Brien's throat; he thumped the empty mug down upon the table. "McHogue must have played hooky the day they talked about Sodom and Gomorrah at school."
"I'm unfamiliar with those worlds."
"Everybody is, these days." The drink appeared to have loosened O'Brien's tongue. "Though maybe McHogue knows more than we do about these things. How does the old song go? 'What's so horrible about a hurricane, compared to somebody who wants his fun?'"
Odo gazed at the chief of operations in bewilderment. "I have no idea what you're talking about."
"Never mind. Just showing off my erudition, quoting a little Bertolt Brecht at you. Early twentieth century—you wouldn't be familiar with him." O'Brien pushed his chair back and stood up. "As always . . . it's been fun. But I think my wife's waiting for me." He turned and headed for the door.
Odo was left as the sole customer. He gazed at the one full and one empty mug before him. Beyond the limits of Quark's establishment, the Promenade was deathly quiet. His job as chief of security had become much easier over the last few shifts—so much so that he was finding it increasingly difficult to keep himself occupied. Rearranging his old files and purging out-of-date ones had taken only a few hours. There had been no need for him to accompany O'Brien on his rounds of blocking the surreptitious entrance points to the station, but doing so had been better than nothing.
He could afford to be nostalgic about the murder epidemic. Now those seemed to him like glory days, a last great flowering of tension and activity. Perhaps I should have taken Gul Dukat up on his job offer—it was a thought that he used to torment himself with, rather than giving it any serious consideration. Since coming back from his visit to the Cardassian diplomatic vessel, the feeling had grown in him that there was going to be plenty of action in Moagitty.
A shadow fell across the table. Odo looked up and saw a familiar face, one that he hadn't seen in several shifts.
"Mind if I join you?" Major Kira managed a weary smile. She glanced over her shoulder. "Though it doesn't look like you would've come here if you were looking for company."
"By all means, Major." He pointed to the chair opposite him. "You're more than welcome." He peered more closely at her. In the dim lighting that Quark favored for his establishment—more out of cheapness than any desire for atmosphere—Odo had almost been unable to recognize his fellow officer. He watched her sit down. "Though if you'll allow me to say so, perhaps you would be better served by making an appointment to see Dr. Bashir. You don't look well."
"Thanks for the concern." Kira rubbed the side of her face with one hand. "I'm just tired, that's all. I've already been told on good authority that I should just go back to my quarters and get some sleep."
"Why don't you?" Odo felt genuine alarm as he gazed at her drawn face; the major looked the way he felt when he was due for his periodic reversion to a liquid state.
Kira shrugged, her shoulders lifting as if a massive weight had been laid upon them. "I tried, but my eyes kept popping open. There just seems to be too much whirling around inside my head. I got tired of looking at the ceiling, so I came down here."
He wondered how much she knew about the current state of affairs on the surface of Bajor. The last time he had checked with the weather-monitoring staff on the Ops deck, the storm winds had increased in force, lashing at the jagged, irregular shapes of Moagitty. Perhaps the clouds that roiled above the planet had their counterpart inside Kira's skull.
"As it happens, I do seem to have some spare time for conversation." He felt enough sympathy for her that he was willing to make an effort at distraction. "More than enough, actually."
"That's life among the unemployed. At least you have enough sense to stay out of trouble."
"Ah, yes—" Odo nodded. "I heard about your unfortunate visit to the altered holosuite. You'll forgive, I hope, my asking you a few questions about that. It's for professional reasons, not just idle curiosity."
"I'm too tired to care. Ask away."
"What did you . . ." He hesitated for a moment. "What did you see in there, Major?"
She told him, her words coming slowly at first, then in a rush that belied her state of exhaustion, as she described the sensation of mounting into an illusory sky, her physical being translated into a pillar of fire.
"But somehow . . . that wasn't the most disturbing part." Kira shook her head in wonderment. Her gaze moved away from Odo, as though she were seeing again the world inside the holosuite. "It was all the things before that. The things that the skinny little child in there saw—that I saw. Those were true things, things that really happened. I remember seeing them . . . a long time ago." She closed her eyes and spoke without opening them. "But I had forgotten all about them; I made myself forget. So it would be as if they hadn't happened at all." She brought her gaze back to Odo. "That's what I wanted. To forget all of that . . . to forget everything. But I couldn't—not forever. Because . . . the past was in there. And . . ." With a single fingertip, she touched the side of her head. "And in here."
Odo made no reply. His own thoughts formed an invisible wall around him, through which he could barely see the person on the other side of the table.
"At any rate," said Kira, "that was the worst part."
"The past . . ." Odo's voice was hardly more than a whisper.
"Pardon?"
"That's what he said. . . ." He pulled himself back. "I'm sorry. It's . . . it's not important."
The major let out her pent-up breath. "All of a sudden . . . I could just lie down right here and go to sleep." She gave a quick snap of her head, to keep herself awake. "It just came over me. . . ." She managed a wan smile at Odo. "Maybe it does some good to talk about these things."
He nodded. "Perhaps it does."
"If you'll excuse me . . ." Kira stood up, leaning against the table for balance. "Now I am ready to take everybody's advice. If anybody needs me, I'll be in my quarters—for a long while."
Odo watched her cross the empty Promenade and head toward the nearest turbolift.
Another voice sounded in his head. A voice that smiled and promised things. He didn't have to close his eyes to see Gul Dukat's face, the Cardassian's gaze weighing and measuring what it beheld in turn. Everything that Dukat said had been perfectly calculated to evoke a response, if not at that time, then later, a seed planted that would be harvested when ripe. . . .