Arrizon walked down the Path of Preferred Payment toward the Central Hall of the Debenture of Triple-Lined Latinum, his heart and soul at peace. Trade and commerce went on at stalls and boutiques on either side of the Path. Voices spoke softly, and gentle laughter drifted by him. As he passed by Ferengi, they bowed politely, smiled, and walked on. Words were not needed. They shared the joy that was the Way of Milia.

Turning through the Avenue of Actuaries, he reached the Central Hall, with its Fountains of Ystrad. It was a loving scale re-creation of the Swamp Forest of Arrizon’s home district. Gold-rimmed, a disk some fifty meters in diameter, the forest rose up into the atrium of the hall. Benches ringed the public space, with timed credit meters mounted on each. Sweeping around the foliage were the fountains themselves, organic-looking threads, rising to above the canopy of green. The water flowed from the sculpted crystal fountains, falling as fine rain over the trees and fungi. He inhaled deeply of the moist, loamy atmosphere. This was a good day. Arrizon smiled again: they had all been good days, since Milia returned.

Near the fountains, he saw and politely acknowledged Nakt and Tyvil, two brothers with whom he had been in a bitter dispute over kevas franchise routes just weeks before. Now, that didn’t matter. It was a detail, a curiosity in the greater fabric of the Way of Milia. They nodded back, genuine smiles on their faces.

Soon, he thought, all Ferengi would know this peace, this contentment.

As he moved on, seeking a bench to sit on for the allotted period his credits would buy, to fully absorb the ambience of the fountains, he noticed four humans. He approached them. Three of them were, he noted dispassionately, clothed females.

He smiled at them. He was glad to see them.

They seemed wary; the tall blond-haired one, carrying a large weapon, spoke quietly to the two dark-haired females and their tall male companion. The male was also armed.

“That will not work here,” he informed the male, politely. He turned at this.

“Excuse me?”

“Your weapon. No weapons work here. It is the Way of Milia.” He beamed a beatific smile. “We have no need of such things. We are all friends here, all of Milia.”

The female with the longer black hair started, “Friend…uh…?”

“Arrizon,” he prompted helpfully.

“Friend Arrizon,” she continued, “we seek the Central Core of your fine ship. Can you help?”

In a grand gesture he indicated the Fountains. “Can there be a greater center than this? It is an expression of all that is glorious on Ferenginar: the rain, the trees, the scent…all that binds us, all that makes us Ferengi!” He was lost in the ecstasy of his exhalations.

“I was asking more about a systems core. Where the machinery is?”

This brought Arrizon up short. The sheer resonant joy and the beauteous rhythms his heart and soul rang to were interrupted momentarily. A voice in his head said: She shouldn’t be asking about this. It was, he noted with some confusion, not his own voice.

He shook his head, looked away, raising his arm behind him to wave to them dismissively. “I, ah, can’t help you. Sorry, I have to move on now.”

He started away, his gait a shuffling uncomfortable one, the Fountains of Ystrad and their attendant joys gone from his mind. He had to find his peace again, commune with Milia.

Gomez watched as the small, nervous Ferengi slunk away. Seconds before he was joy unparalleled; now he was nervous.

“Odd,” commented Carol Abramowitz, the ship’s cultural specialist. “That’s the first negative reaction we’ve gotten from a Ferengi since we got here.”

“I know what you mean,” Corsi said. Despite the Ferengi’s warning, neither she nor Vance Hawkins had lowered their phasers. “It’s making me nervous.”

Gomez sighed. “And Phug’s directions are proving less than helpful…it’s like someone’s redesigned elements of this city-ship to deliberately hide the computer core.”

“It’s like a living representation of the Seventy-Sixth Rule,” Corsi said. “‘Every once in a while, declare peace. It confuses the hell out of your enemies!’”

Gomez shook her head. “That’s the second time you’ve quoted the Ferengi Rules of Acquisition, Domenica. I’d expect Carol here to know them, but it hardly seems your area of expertise, no offense.”

“None taken.” Corsi nodded at a passing trader decked in the long coat and gleaming bejeweled headskirt of a Senior Actuary, before continuing. “As far as I’m concerned, there’s no difference between the Rules of Acquisition and any other handbook of war—Sun-Tzu’s The Art of War, Admiral Chekov’s Meditations on a Pre-Surak Vulcan, the writings of Kahless. That they call their battles ‘commerce’ is a matter of semantics.” She smiled. “Two Hundred Thirty-Ninth Rule: ‘Never be afraid to mislabel a product.’”

As they turned into the Row of Restored Antiquities (as Phug’s directions indicated) they noticed a short hooded figure, obviously a Ferengi, though he carried himself differently than the others. He held a staff, made of conduit piping, Gomez noted with some curiosity. “Something…” she muttered.

“What is it, Commander?” Corsi asked.

“There’s something oddly familiar to all this…this niceness. Especially that one,” she added, pointing to the hooded Ferengi.

The Ferengi then raised his staff, his hood falling back slightly.

Gomez noted with alarm his dead, dark eyes.