CHAPTER
6

“HE WANTS TO WHAT?”

Sisko seemed unsure whether to laugh or not. Odo, for his part, tended to take everything seriously. No one could quite recall ever hearing him laugh at anything.

They were in the commander’s office, and now Sisko was indeed starting to laugh. But it was more of an abrupt bark of amusement. “He wants to what?” he said again.

“You heard me, Sisko,” said Odo sharply. “He wants to buy Deep Space Nine.”

Sisko pondered that a moment. “What sort of offer is he planning to make?”

Odo tilted his head, not quite understanding. Seeing the shapeshifter’s confused look, Sisko said, “Well . . . we want to know if he’s going to make it worth our while. How much do you think we can get for this station?”

“Sisko!”

“Well, you don’t think we should simply dismiss the offer out of hand, do you? Where would the sense be in that?”

Odo looked hard at him. “This is one of those joke things, isn’t it?”

“Well . . . I admit I’m not being entirely serious, if that’s what you mean. Perhaps the Ferengi were playing a joke on you, Constable. Is it possible they knew you were there?”

“Hardly.” Odo sniffed.

“Ah, well.” Sisko allowed a smile. “Relax, Constable. You have to admit, with all the difficulties we’ve had to deal with on DS-Nine, handling a Ferengi who wants to buy it from us is rather lightweight.”

“I suppose,” allowed Odo. “It is fairly nonsensical. Of all the Ferengi schemes I’ve had to short-circuit in the past, this is certainly one of the most ludicrous.”

“It’s not even a scheme. It won’t require your intervention,” said Sisko. “Let them come, make their offer. I’ll listen politely, tell them the station’s not for sale, and that should be that.”

“If I know Quark—and believe me, no one knows him better than I—that is rarely, if ever, that.”

Sisko gave the matter some thought. “Have you ever wondered, Constable, what it would be like to be unscrupulous?”

“No,” said Odo, sounding faintly puzzled. “Why would I wonder about something like that?”

“Well, imagine it,” said Sisko. “We agree to sell the station, fabricate official documents transferring ownership, and then . . . I think the old phrase is ‘take the money and run.’”

“I think you’re losing your mind, Sisko.”

Sisko sighed. “No. Not losing my mind. Just . . . always pondering the possibilities.” He eased back in his chair, but did not look comfortable.

Odo wasn’t quite sure what to say. Clearly Sisko had something on his mind, but Odo wasn’t sure it was something the Starfleet commander wanted to talk about. And even if it was, why should Odo waste his time with it? Let Sisko unburden himself to Dax or someone else. Odo regarded Sisko as, at best, a necessary evil. At worst, a nuisance. A living symbol of an organization whose members wore a holier-than-thou attitude on their uniform sleeves.

Still . . . 

“It’s Jake, isn’t it?” Odo said, feeling some reluctance about mixing into this.

But Sisko actually seemed grateful for the opening, and Odo rationalized it to himself by concluding that ingratiating himself with Sisko now might prove useful in the future, so that Odo would be free to do his job his way.

“It’s not easy,” said Sisko slowly, “to make decisions in life that you know are right for you . . . when you constantly have to worry about how they’re affecting someone else.”

“It’s Jake,” said Odo firmly, his question answered. “Sisko, he’s a boy. He knows nothing from nothing.”

“He knows he’s unhappy. He knows he’s scared.”

“Of what?”

“Of growing up alone. Of having no friends. Of losing me. I mean, DS-Nine holds challenge for me. What does it hold for him? What does a life in Starfleet hold for him?”

Odo said nothing.

Sisko rose, feeling his temper bubbling, and he suppressed it. Instead he turned it into bleak humor. “I should do it. Sell the station to the Ferengi, then take the money and run. To hell with it.”

“I’d probably have to arrest you,” said Odo.

Sisko regarded him with mild interest. “I’d like to see you try. I warn you, Constable . . . you’d have your work cut out for you.”

“I think I could handle you,” Odo told him.

“Don’t be so sure. You’re looking at the meanest phaser this side of the asteroid belt. Do you know what they called me in Starfleet Academy?”

“Just a guess here: Sisko?”

“They called me Dead-Eye. That was because . . . ”

“You were blind in one eye?”

“Nooo. Because I was the best shot there. You’re looking at the inventor of the two-cushion phaser ricochet shot. I’d set up a mirror, bounce a phaser shot off it, and still hit the target.”

“I see. I don’t imagine you’ve heard the adage about the shortest distance between two points being a straight line.”

Sisko stared sadly at Odo. “Constable, you have no sense of adventure at all.”

“There are more subtle ways to deal with things than by shooting them, trick shots or no,” said Odo. “Unless, of course, you plan to knock some sense into your son’s head by bouncing a phaser beam off his cranium.”

“That would hardly solve the problem.”

“No,” Odo said reasonably, “but it would stop him from whining about it.”

Before Sisko could respond to that rather mean-spirited comment, Dr. Bashir stuck his head into the office. “Do you have a moment, Commander?”

“We were finished,” said Odo, before Sisko could reply. He rose and walked out into the main Ops area.

As Odo passed O’Brien, the chief engineer suddenly said, “Constable!”

“Yes, Chief?”

“Remember how you nailed my sleight of hand before?”

“Yes.”

“You have to give me a chance to even things up.”

“I do? Why would I have to do that?”

“Because if I can do a trick that will fool you, then I can certainly do tricks to fool Molly.”

“Ah. You feel that I have the same deductive capabilities as your tot. I see.”

But O’Brien wasn’t listening. He had produced a deck of cards and was rapidly shuffling them. Before Odo could make clear that he wasn’t remotely interested in participating, O’Brien held the cards up in a fan. “Pick a card,” he said.

“Why?”

“So I can do the trick.”

“Oh, very well.” He pointed to one card, facing down like all the others. “That one.”

“All right. Look at the card.”

Odo stared at it.

From nearby, Dax watched in mild amusement. Kira tuned out the entire business, concentrating on charting the flux in the emissions from the wormhole.

“What are you doing?” asked O’Brien, barely hiding his impatience.

“I’m looking at the card,” replied Odo, who was making no effort at all to hide his impatience.

“I meant take it out of the deck and look at it,” said O’Brien, and then added quickly, “and then replace it without telling me which one it is.”

Odo did as he was told. O’Brien then reshuffled the deck, fanned the cards once more, and then triumphantly produced a seven of hearts.

“Is this your card?” he asked.

“No,” said Odo.

O’Brien’s face fell, but only for a moment. He gamely sorted through the deck once more and this time produced the two of clubs. “Is this your card?”

“No.”

They stared at each other.

“Devil take it,” muttered O’Brien. “Maybe I should just take up juggling.”

 

Bashir held his medical padd in front of him as if it were a shield. On it were all the medical records that the biobed had discerned from young Rasa and the diagnosis that Bashir had developed in tandem with the resources of the computer.

“Are you sure?” Sisko asked him.

“Yes, sir,” said Bashir. “It’s called panoria. It’s a viral condition, and extremely debilitating. Most Edemians have a natural immunity to it. About three percent do not. The short-term effects of this illness are general malaise, easy exhaustion, and an overall negative effect on the metabolism. In the long term . . . it is much worse. In less than a year it causes a gradual shutdown of the entire metabolic process. The patient becomes an invalid . . . for the brief period of time that is left him.”

“It’s terminal, then.” Sisko’s voice sounded like the chime of doom, even to him.

“If left untreated, yes. Most definitely.”

“I’ll order Rasa quarantined immediately.”

“Not necessary, sir,” Bashir said with conviction. “Panoria is unique to Edemians and two other races, neither of whom are present in Deep Space Nine; for that matter, they don’t even possess sufficient technological capabilities to travel this far. Rasa may be a danger to himself . . . but not to others.”

“You said, ‘if left untreated.’ Does that mean the boy can be saved?”

“Absolutely,” said Bashir firmly. “I’ve checked over our medical stock, and I can very easily synthesize the elements required. We would have to start him on medication immediately. Ideally, it should have been started several weeks ago.”

“Several weeks? Doctor, how long has the boy been ill?”

“The symptoms would have easily been noticeable”—Bashir paused, counting backwards in terms of the usual known progress of the disease—”three weeks ago. Elevated pulse rate, nausea, fever, malaise, aches and pains . . . ”

“Why in the world hasn’t the boy been treated already?”

“I’m hardly in a position to answer that, sir,” said Bashir.

“In that case, let’s go ask the people who are.”

He rose and came from around his desk, but as he and Bashir approached the office exit, Odo appeared in the doorway.

“Another problem, Constable?” asked Sisko.

“That,” said Odo, “is putting it mildly.”

 

One of Odo’s security men was standing there at the entrance to Lobb’s quarters arguing with Mas Marko when Odo, Sisko, and Bashir walked up. The security man, Meyer by name, looked relieved upon Odo’s arrival.

Marko turned to face Sisko and Odo. “Commander,” he rumbled, “your man is being uncooperative.” He pointed a large ebony finger at Meyer.

“Following your orders, sir,” Meyer said flatly. “No civilians in or out. Boyajian and Tang are in there now with the . . . victim.”

“Who filed the report?”

“Passerby, sir. Said she heard a scream. We checked it out and found . . . the situation.”

“This is the quarters of one of my people,” said Mas Marko firmly, his voice rising and sounding more and more dangerous. “If one of them has been injured or is in any sort of peril, I must go in immediately. Now, in the name of K’olkr, let me pass!”

Sisko didn’t exactly ignore him. But he was clearly not about to be intimidated by him, either.

“Is the room secure?” Odo asked.

“Yes, sir,” Meyer said. “No one was seen leaving, and our people have the room sealed off.”

“All right,” said Sisko. “Let us in. Mas Marko, wait out here, please.”

“I—”

Sisko’s glare was palpable. “Wait out here, please.” His tone was flat and unyielding.

Marko said nothing. He did, however, glower more fiercely than anyone Sisko had ever met, with the possible exception of Odo himself.

Odo seemed to have forgotten Marko entirely. He entered the room with Sisko and Bashir right behind him. The door rolled shut.

Sisko was immediately hit by the stench of death. He had encountered it so many times in his life that it seemed to be permanently embroidered on the inside of his nostrils.

But this . . . 

This was beyond the pale.

Boyajian and Tang were going over the quarters with tricorders, trying to stay as far from the body as possible. Bashir leaned over the corpse, running his medical tricorder over it and clearly fighting to maintain his medical dispassion. That was not easy.

It was hard to find anywhere on the floor to step that was not thick with blood. The head had been crushed beyond recognition—as brutal and hideous a death as Bashir had witnessed in his brief medical career.

“I take it cause of death is the obvious?” Sisko tried not to shudder as he looked upon Lobb’s corpse.

“Massive, catastrophic head trauma,” said Bashir. “The victim was definitely one of the Edemians.”

“Before we let Mas Marko in here,” observed Odo, “we’d better make damned sure he has a strong stomach. Boyajian, Tang . . . go over every centimeter of this place. Take it apart molecule by molecule if you have to. I want this killer found, and found immediately. Nobody gets away with this on my station. Nobody.”

“Constable,” said Sisko, “what, precisely, do you make of this?”

Odo stepped over to the wall, to see what Sisko was pointing at. “I saw it the second we came in,” he said in a low voice. “It was impossible to miss.”

On the wall, etched with Lobb’s own blood, was a large number one.

“Crosshatch followed by an Arabic numeral,” said Sisko. “The killer was human.”

“Either that,” said Odo, “or the killer wanted to make sure that the human commander of this station got the message.”

“And in your opinion, Constable . . . what is that message?” But he was afraid he already knew the answer, and Odo confirmed it.

“Where there’s a number one,” said Odo slowly, “there’s usually a number two, a number three, and so on. Sisko . . . we’d better catch this lunatic fast. We might very well have a serial killer loose on Deep Space Nine.”