CHAPTER
14

QUARK WAS STANDING behind his own bar, his hands trembling as he held his fourth synthale in the past hour. He raised it to his mouth, trying not to spill any of it. Across from him sat Glav, shaking his head. “I thought you were dead,” he admitted.

“You thought I was dead? No one was more convinced than I was,” replied Quark. “And I thought you were dead.”

“If you hadn’t conjured up that smoke screen, I would have been. What was that, anyway?”

“Dantus-Three. The fog is so perpetually thick there that the natives communicate entirely through the sense of touch.”

“Sounds charming.”

“It is . . . under the right circumstances.” He gulped down the drink. “I tell you, Glav, nothing makes you more aware of your own mortality than a brush with death.”

“This was more than a brush,” said Glav. “If it hadn’t been for that Starfleet man . . . ”

“Yes. That’s quite correct.”

They turned to see that Bashir was standing nearby, listening, a look of quiet confidence in his eye.

“Doctor!” Quark called out. “How excellent to see you! Come! Come over here! Glav, make room for our most excellent friend!”

Bashir smiled appreciatively at Quark’s reaction and sidled up to the bar. Glav patted him on the back. “You, sir, are our savior.”

“Yes! What Glav just said is true,” confirmed Quark. “At first, I must admit, I did not appreciate the disruption of my personal activities. But for obvious reasons I’m not exactly in a position to take you to task for interrupting us. A drink, on the house!”

“Very kind of you,” said Bashir.

As Quark pushed a synthale over to him, he asked Bashir, “You . . . you don’t think that creature is lurking about, do you?”

“I hope not,” replied Bashir. “Now . . . I need to talk to you about something, Quark. The way I see it . . . you owe me.”

Quark frowned. “I just gave you a free drink. Doesn’t that make us even?”

Bashir gaped at him. “Are you saying your life is worth only one drink?”

Glav and Quark exchanged looks. “He’s got a point,” said Glav. “Maybe you should give him a second drink.”

Bashir pushed the drink aside. “I’m not looking for free drinks.”

“Well, what, then?” demanded Quark. Then suddenly his eyes narrowed and he took a step back suspiciously. “Wait . . . how do I know that you’re not the creature?”

“If I were the creature,” Bashir pointed out, “I could kill you easily right now. I’m sitting barely a foot away. Furthermore, if I am, it won’t do you any harm to discuss what I want, because if I’m not Dr. Bashir, then nothing we agree to will be binding.”

Quark considered the reasoning in that. “All right. That seems acceptable. So what do you want, Doctor?”

“I want you to program one of the holosuites with a special program that I will describe.”

Quark licked his lips. “How . . . sexual is it? If I can make use of it after you’re done . . . or make it available to customers . . . ”

Bashir looked at him as if he’d grown a third eye. “It’s not sexual at all. Not remotely. It may, however, do someone some good.”

“Pfaw,” snorted Quark. “Do you know how difficult it is to program a new holosimulation from scratch? It takes time, and time is valuable—particularly my time. Besides, I’m not sure I want my holosuites tainted by something pristine.”

“Quark, I saved your life!”

“All right!” sighed Quark. “Free drinks at Quark’s for the next year, not to exceed one per day. That’s my best offer.”

Glav nodded approvingly. “I’d take it, if I were you.”

“I do have my standards, after all,” affirmed Quark.

Bashir’s lips thinned almost to nonexistence. “And do your standards,” he inquired, “include erotic representations of Deep Space Nine personnel? Hmm?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Quark said fairly convincingly.

He wasn’t nearly convincing enough, though. “Quark,” said Bashir calmly. “How do you think Lieutenant Dax and Major Kira would react if they found out about your activities?”

“Doctor,” said Quark pleadingly, “you . . . you wouldn’t. It was . . . it was just a harmless pursuit, that’s all. No insult was meant by it. In fact, when you think about it, it was actually flattering to them!”

“Indeed. In that case, I’ll make sure they know just how enthusiastically you were flattering them.”

Bashir began to slide off his seat, but Quark quickly grabbed his forearm. “Wait!”

“Yes, Quark?”

Quark muttered some obscenities in his native tongue. “All right, Doctor. You drive a hard bargain. It makes me wonder if you’re not part Ferengi. At any rate, I’ll program whatever you want. Free of charge. Use it for however long you want. Use it until you choke!” he added vehemently.

“Thank you, Quark. I’ll get you the specifications immediately. Oh, and Quark . . . ”

“Yes?” said Quark tiredly. He despised being bested in a deal, even when the deal was with a man to whom he owed his craven life.

“What is the code name of that program with Dax and Kira?”

Quark perked up. “Ahhh. XXX-three. It’s from my private stock, but if you’re interested . . .”

“I want it erased.”

“Doctor!”

“I mean it, Quark. I want it gone. Adios. And if you try anything like that again with any station personnel, then all bets are off. I’ll blab the whole thing. And I can assure you that when Dax and Kira—particularly Kira—get through with you, you’ll wish the metamorph had gotten you. Understood?”

“Understood,” grunted Quark.

“Good. Because I’ll check.”

Quark gave him a sullen look. “Yes. Somehow I knew you would.”

“Ops to Dr. Bashir,” came Kira’s voice over Bashir’s badge. “Can you spare a moment, Doctor?”

“On my way.”

He nodded once more to Quark and then rose and headed toward the turbolifts.

Glav made a scolding noise. “You didn’t once mention to him our plan to buy the—”

“Oh, shut up,” said Quark irritably.

 

“How in hell am I supposed to tell people they can’t leave this station?” demanded Sisko.

They were grouped around the operations console: Sisko, Kira, Dax, Odo, O’Brien, and Bashir. Sisko’s eyes were angry as he surveyed his people.

“At first we thought we could keep it under control,” said Sisko. “But you saw what that creature—”

“Would you kindly refrain from referring to ‘it’ as a ‘creature,’ Sisko?” Odo’s tone was cutting. He was attempting to cover up his personal affront and not doing a terribly good job of it.

Sisko nodded. “My sincere apologies, Constable. Very well . . . we all saw what that individual could do. More to the point, he caused a panic in the Promenade. It’s a miracle that no one was trampled. We have to start getting people out of here.”

“And the metamorph goes out with them,” said Kira.

“Not necessarily,” said Bashir. “We can run life scans on the ships’ equipment to make sure he’s not hiding on board any of the departing vessels.”

“Not good enough,” said Odo firmly. “He’s devious. He could manage to get aboard after a ship’s been scanned. Hell, he could disguise himself as the scanner and inform you that the ship is clean.”

“If only we were within beaming distance of Bajor,” said Dax. “We could transport them off the station.”

Questioningly, Sisko turned to O’Brien.

O’Brien looked to be in genuine pain. “You’re . . . going to tell me to find a way to move the station back, aren’t you?” said O’Brien. It was not something that he would be thrilled to do. “Sir . . . the station really isn’t designed for that. There’s a forty percent chance that the increased stress could rip DS-Nine apart if we put her through that again.”

“That would solve the problem,” Odo said sarcastically, “although in a rather more terminal fashion than we would like.”

“It may be a moot point,” observed Sisko. “Could we be sure that we wouldn’t beam down a disguised metamorph to Bajor’s surface? I somehow doubt they’d be any happier to have that . . . that individual running around down there than we are having it here.”

“We could be sure of those people on whom I have medical information,” said Bashir firmly. “I’d have something to compare it to. I could run a med scan and confirm their identities.”

“In other words,” said Sisko dryly, “all Starfleet personnel.”

“That’s correct.”

“Oh, that’ll look just wonderful,” said Odo. “Starfleet abandons Deep Space Nine while all the transients and Bajorans have to stay put.”

“Are we supposed to balance lives against ‘how things will look’?” asked Bashir.

“If Starfleet is going to pull this sector together, we can’t simply cut our losses and bolt when danger threatens,” said Sisko. “But, just out of curiosity . . . would you be willing to leave, Doctor? Head down to Bajor, and safety?”

Bashir looked down. “No,” he said softly. “I couldn’t see myself doing that.”

“How about you, Lieutenant?”

Dax smiled slightly. “You know the answer to that, Benjamin.”

“Major?”

“One of the freedom fighters in Bajoran history was a man named Ayvon of the Seven,” said Kira. “He had many famous sayings, and I think that paraphrasing one here would be appropriate: I’m not Starfleet, I’m not a coward, and I’m not going.”

Sisko glanced over to O’Brien. “Chief?”

“I don’t cut and run from anyone, sir,” said O’Brien. “Oh, I wouldn’t mind shipping my family down . . . but I don’t see Keiko leaving if I’m staying.”

“Anyone else?” Sisko looked around Ops and was pleased to see firm shaking of heads. These were Starfleet personnel. They wouldn’t scamper under any circumstances. “All right, then,” he said proudly. “We’re in this together, then. But we’re back where we started: how do we catch him?”

“How about this?” said O’Brien. “He seems to favor getting here and about through the air ducts. Suppose we shut down the entire station—docking ring, habitat, everything—and seal everyone in the upper levels of the core. With everyone all together, a stranger would stick out like a sore thumb. Then we vent the air ducts—blow the atmosphere out of the whole damned station. He needs air to breathe like anyone else. He should be easy enough to find when he’s passed out.”

“Not necessarily,” said Odo. “Presuming, just for the sake of argument, that he’s like me, the lack of atmosphere isn’t going to deter him. I don’t have internal organs in any sense you’d understand. I don’t draw air into lungs or require it to oxygenate blood. Air permeates my entire mass and remains there for some time. Indefinitely, insofar as I’ve been able to determine. So the chances are that he could survive quite nicely until we restore atmosphere to the station.”

“Still, the air-vent escape method he uses is certainly his greatest weapon against us,” said Sisko. “If we could figure out some way to deprive him of that . . . ”

“All right,” said O’Brien, not sounding the least bit deterred. His brow wrinkled for a moment, and then he said, “How about this? By cross-wiring key circuit junctures and wiring them through the security field generators, I could ionize the air in the ducts. Give him one hell of a jolt. How would something like that affect you, Mr. Odo?”

“I wouldn’t like it,” said Odo.

“Okay,” said O’Brien, his spirits rising. Contemplating all sorts of hideous possibilities was not the way he liked to spend his time. When he had a problem to solve through technological maneuvering, however, he was supremely happy. “Now, I’d have to shut off circulation throughout the station. That won’t present any sort of immediate problem, as long as we bring the circulators back on line within a reasonable period. The other problem is that I’ll have to cross-wire every circuit juncture individually. Even with all my men on it, it’s going to take time.”

“How much time?”

“Well,” said O’Brien with slightly diminished enthusiasm, “that’s the rub. There are over two hundred circuit junctures throughout the station, and two-thirds of them are not in the greatest of shape. That’s one of the reasons things keep screwing up around the station. Hot-wiring the lot of ’em would take at least twelve hours, maybe longer.”

“Then the sooner you start, the sooner you’ll finish.”

“Yes, sir.”

“But before you go,” said Sisko, turning toward Bashir, “Dr. Bashir will run a med scan on you to verify your identity. On all of us, just to play it safe.”

There were nods from all around, but Odo was frowning. “We’re assuming that this being can simulate specific humanoids. That’s something I’ve never quite been able to do.”

“We can’t take anything for granted, Constable.”

“No, Sisko, of course we can’t. But if that does turn out to be within his abilities, then after I catch him”—he sighed—”I hope he’ll tell me how he does it.”

 

*  *  *

 

After Bashir finished in Ops, he headed down to the infirmary. Nurse Latasa looked up from one of the medical computers questioningly, and Bashir said, “Preganglionic.”

“Kiss me, you fool. But keep telling yourself, Doctor: it’s only a password,” she said, smiling. Then she pointed to a computer terminal. “This stopped working, Doctor.”

“I’ll get the chief on it when he has a chance,” said Bashir. “But he’s going to be somewhat tied up for a while. Is this one still operating?” He pointed to another computer terminal.

She nodded.

“All right, then,” he said. “Copy the entire file we have on the med readings I took on the Edemian boy, Rasa. Also, load on all available information on panoria—symptoms, effects, everything.”

Latasa’s fingers tapped out a command. She slid an isolinear chip into a receptacle and waited a moment.

“Copy completed,” the computer said primly.

She removed the isolinear chip deftly and handed it to Bashir. “Thank you, Nurse,” he said.

“No problem, Doctor. May I ask what it’s for?”

“Maybe,” he told her, waving the chip, “we can pull something useful out of all the death that’s going on around here. We may just be able to save a life.”

He glanced around the infirmary. “It’s quiet today,” he said. “Where is everyone?”

She sighed. “Most of the Bajoran orderlies said they felt ill. I hear they’re sealing themselves in their quarters until the crisis is over.”

“Well, I appreciate your nerve, at least,” said Bashir. “Don’t worry, Nurse. We’ll weather this storm.”

“Whatever you say, Doctor,” she replied.

Bashir flashed that famous smile of his once more and then walked out of the infirmary.

Latasa walked back to the broken medical computer, sat down in front of it, and punched an entry code onto it. There was still no response.

“Stupid piece of junk,” she said and gave it a sharp rap on the side.

The computer struck back.