Chapter Four

Who am I?

The first thing he saw was the yellow stains of blood. The krokatwa trap was broken, and usually they were so cleverly set by the Ferengi of the Bayou so that to go near one would kill a krokatwa cleanly without harming anything of value to the bayou.

Usually these traps made it safe, and there were other clever ways the Ferengi had dealt with them such as stunting the krokatwa's growth.

Ancient Ferengi believed them to be as sentient as they were and bringers of malicious doom and vengeance upon those whose cruelty overstepped their right. Ancient whispers of such fairy tales haunted Dabri's face now as though the krokatwa was there to eat his very soul away and bar him from entering the Divine Treasury forever.

In the more physical sense, it was freakish enough that a modern krokatwa had managed not only to evade the trap but destroy it. It was a monster! And there had been rumors of one being that big that the boys of the bayou would tease each other about. Dabri had been among the adults who had shaken their heads in disgust about with such nonsense when boys should be thinking more about profit, but he was shaking with fear now.

The broken trap was a mangled mess along the soggy bank, and Dabri jumped back in terror lest the krokatwa should return.

"You idiots!" he wailed. "She wasn't drowned! She was eaten! Can't you see that?"

The blood was likely from a krokatwa itself, and Pel had certainly gone out of her way to make this whole scene as crazed as possible to fool Dabri, but there was no way anyone was going to explain that to him.

He shook the stupefied Jembar violently and threw him to the ground. Inwardly, Jembar was laughing to see his stepfather so upset and was unhurt, but he played up injury with a moan.

"Maeeshpela!" screamed Dabri falling to his knees in despair.

He pulled on his own lobes in his agony so that Jembar and Foraneel looked at each other and backed away with fear of him much more than from any krokatwa. He looked like he may have gone mad as he threw his head into the sloppy bank before him. All that loss of latinum was escaping through that name.

And that name was so powerful in its emotion to all present that Bashir who had nearly lost himself again in this strange and bewildering drama that the name touched his own lips.

#

"…Maeeshpela."

The fact that the last scene was almost as ridiculous as it was tragic left a deeper impression than it otherwise might have.

"What?" demanded the Ferengi.

All the flashing was gone. Bashir was on the ground on Pelipa. He almost felt as though he had just stepped off of a ship that had been spinning out of control with disorienting broken gravity controls on the fritz. Or maybe like an out-of-control ride in a nightmarish amusement park after eating three bowls of macaroni and cheese with a bowl of chocolate mousse and a migraine besides. That was far more accurate. Had it been a ship out of control he would not have felt so much like he would vomit. He stared at Maeeshpela even stranger than before so that she stepped back in alarm. She obviously thought he was madder than Foraneel and Jembar thought Dabri had been.

But she was not daunted long.

"Who are you?" she hissed in her little squeaky voice. "What do you want?"

"You're Maeeshpela," cracked the voice that apparently was left of Bashir's as he looked down at this fierce face more than foot below his own.

"Where have you heard that name?"

"Everywhere…" he moaned before he could take it back. "Except Quark's Bar."

Maeeshpela jumped. "What?"

"The Keeoopii," murmured Bashir.

"What's a 'keeoopii'?" demanded Pel.

"They're on Ferenginar… or the creatures inside them are… or they're going to be. They're after you, and— and your father—No."

Horrified, Pel gasped. "My father?"

"Gleb. I don't know what he has to do with any of this. Maybe nothing, but—"

"Who are you?" Pel demanded.

"I—"

Bashir started as he tried again, not for the last time, to recall what his name was and who he was. It was all a very trying experience, but he had no time to dwell on it as Pel quite abruptly took his wrist. Although he might have broken away from her, he only let out a small cry in his stupor and allowed himself to be towed somewhere more private than the yard outside the stables.

Behind a tall plump hedge, as the Pelipans liked them, there was a shed, and into this, Pel thrust him.

"You can't be a mind reader!" she snapped stamping her foot. "That's not possible. A Ferengi can't be penetrated that way."

"Well, that's not necessarily always—" Bashir started to say, but he shook his head before he could confuse the issue. "I'm not a telepath. I'm…

What was he exactly?

Inwardly, Bashir shivered.

He was not exactly a normal Human anymore. Was he ever, anyway? Whatever he was going through might have driven a genetically unaltered Human to insanity beyond repair. The way this whole thing was jumbling his mind and slowing it down one way and speeding it up another way, he was more positive than ever that it would kill most people given time. He was still shaken from his "memories" or whatever they were of everything he had seen in a flash in the void of time and space. Would he last long, either?

But what was he?

That was a question even more confusing than who he was.

After recalling her tea mug to mind and shoving it onto a shelf violently, Pel studied him hard as though trying to penetrate into his mind herself, but as large and powerful as a Ferengi brain was there was no recorded evidence that one had ever been able to read anyone's mind.

Good thing too, Bashir could not help but think; though he could not think exactly badly of Maeeshpela at this point.

He felt guilty knowing her too well without her permission anyway even if it was not exactly his fault.

He had not even gotten a very good look at her adult-self during those flashes. Seeing her now, she still held that childish look about her that she had when she was leaning up at her father's desk on tiptoe. She looked a little silly, despite everything, in a Pelipan riding outfit. It was made to fit her perfectly tailored, of course, but it was designed for the seven-to-eight-foot tall broad shouldered, long limbed Pelipans.

Her bright yellow leather riding coat came down just above her knees and was held together with a thick metallic stretchy belt that looked too broad big for her tiny waist. Her boots were shin-lengthed and healed. The kimono-like collar and plush sleeves at the elbow looked like bandana material, and the way it bunched was like an overabundance of feathery fluff about her slim neck and elbows. Her fingerless gloves and the bottoms of her trousers were held with bands similar to the belt and also looked overwhelmingly large on her, especially with the inexpensive disks of smoothed ruby-like gemstones. Her thick, laced riding trousers plumed at the boots. Altogether, she appeared smaller than she normally would, and yet, somehow that only enhanced the fierceness of her blue-green eyes.

Her sharp teeth were in a very slight clench as she looked at him under the shadow of her brow ridge as though she felt she was taller than him and hovered over him like a proud Klingon woman rather than a little Ferengi outcast. He was reminded briefly of a little terrier that thought it was a mastiff.

And she was listening to him too.

He would not have needed flashes of Ferengi life to know that, but the thought might have passed him by normally. Not like now. He almost felt his own sense of hearing now as a very dull sense despite how he reached out with them to hear the rising wind after the dawn— the creaking of the shed, the muffled voices, the strange caribou-like song-sounds of the kabyu. Pelipan flutes, lutes, and indescribable percussion could be heard distantly playing, and insects were humming somewhere in the opposite direction, but Pel was silent as she held her breath, except the scuffing of her boots along the sharply-cut stone floor. She heard far more of him than he did of her.

This only lasted less than a minute. Pel was impatient for answers, and after what she felt was a sufficient pause for an answer to her questions, she said again, "Who are you? What do you want?"

Clearing his throat a little, he answered, "My name is Julian Bashir. I'm a doctor for Starfleet."

Pel wrinkled her wrinkled nose with dissatisfaction. Besides the doctor part, she had already known where he was from. She looked

now at his badge before flicking her eyesight back to his face.

"A doctor can't just know things by being a doctor," she retorted.

"That's very true," admitted Bashir. "And you deserve an explanation."

"Yes, I do," agreed Pel. "What do you know about Gleb?"

"Well," said Bashir feeling just a little more himself, "that he's your father and that he was fairly independent even for Ferengi standards not choosing to work for or work over anyone if he could help it with many odd jobs going on at once which he was usually very good at organizing in his own way. He was very devoted to you and his family and had a way with the Great Bayou's richest man Pela after whose Woods you're named. He caught Karnavo Fever without being properly treated by using the cheapest doctor in the Great Bayou. Though, as it is a rare disease and obviously affects Ferengi a little differently than most other people, so—"

"He was poisoned," said Pel.

"There's no real evidence that Dabri poisoned Gleb."

"He poisoned him," said Pel beginning to become very tense with emotion. "You weren't there. You don't know."

"Well, I was there," said Bashir despite himself.

"You can't possibly have been there. No one outside the family and the doctor had anything to do with it," protested Pel. "It was private! It means nothing to anyone but us! How do you know anything about that? How do you know I have anything to do with Gleb at all? How do you know my name? I've never told it to anyone, and there's no profit for anyone to know it even for those who fall under Rule Number 97."

"'Beware of the Vulcan greed for knowledge?'" demanded Bashir.

"Yes!" said Pel throwing up her head defiantly.

There was a short pause before Pel went on again. "And what does Gleb or—or Quark have to do with me and these koopee-eye? Is that where you learned about this from? Are they some strange sort of telepaths that can penetrate Ferengi minds?"

"Ah, yes, the Keeoopii…" muttered Bashir more to himself than to her as he glanced out the small window of the shed.