Disclaimer: I do not own Deep Space 9 or any of its characters. All Rules of Acquisition quoted in this story are from various canon and non-canon sources.
Spoilers: Through Season 6 Episode, "Favor the Bold."
Setting: Shortly after the "Lords of All They Survey" Upper Promenade scene wherein the female changeling realized she had chosen her words poorly. Perhaps she walked by Quark's and decided to try to gain some insight into Odo. Unfortunately for her, satisfaction is not guaranteed….
Liquid Assets
Quark felt a tingling in his lobes and turned around, hearing profit in the wind. The female changeling stood on the other side of the bar, her unfinished features blandly observing everything around her. "The riskier the road, the greater the profit," Quark mentally quoted, drawing himself up to his full height.
"Welcome to Quark's bar, grill, and gaming emporium," he said in his brashest voice. "What can I get for you? Perhaps I could interest you in a game of Dabo, or a visit to a holosuite."
"Does Odo come in here often?" she asked, ignoring his sales pitch.
"He and I are old friends," Quark said. "He often makes sure I don't do business with any unsavory criminals. Odo helps me keep my business dealings strictly on the up-and-up."
"Hmm," she said, reminding Quark of Odo. "Does he ever engage in Solid activities like pleasure and acquisition?"
Quark snorted. "Not Odo. I've tried to convince him to relax in my holosuites, but he always harrumphs and tells me they're a waste of time. Odo probably has a small fortune stored up since he never seems to buy anything. All that latinum…"
"I've never understood you Solids' obsession with acquisition. Of course, a changeling needs nothing but the Link."
"Well, if you want to understand greed and acquisition, you've come to the right place," Quark said. "It never hurts to suck up to the boss," and she could shut me down faster than Damar can down a glass of kanar.
"Tell me," she commanded.
"We humanoids have short life-spans compared to you changelings," Quark said. "Since we don't live long lives, we try to live the best possible life. That means we need to acquire things that will make us happy."
"How can things make you happy?" the female changeling asked.
"You changelings don't eat, but we humanoids value a good meal and find the consumption of food necessary and pleasurable," Quark said. "The more money you have, the better food you can buy. The better food you can buy, the better you can eat. The better you can eat, the happier you'll be."
"I see," the female changeling said, her blank expression belying her words. "What a pity, to be so limited."
"Limited?" Quark said. "On the contrary, the possibilities are limitless. Latinum can purchase things that make us humanoids happier in a more abstract way. A good holosuite program can provide hours of enjoyment. A beautiful Bajoran betrothal bracelet can show your lover the value you place on your relationship. A stylish outfit can convince customers and other businessmen of your value and taste."
"A changeling can look like anything it pleases," the female changeling said. "All we need to invest is time, which we have in abundance."
"If I could develop a way for humanoids to do the same, I could buy a mansion made of gold-pressed latinum," Quark said. "But the best I can do is to procure goods that will bring people pleasure—for a modest fee, of course."
"Of course," she said serenely. "Nobody would ever look at you and expect dishonesty."
Quark flashed his toothiest grin, wishing he had a quantum stasis field generator. Not that I'd be able to so much as activate it with those Jem'Hadar waiting for any excuse to tear me apart. They're probably named something ridiculous like Rectan'gular or Irreg'ular. Way to go, Quark; now you're mentally joking in Federation Standard. Father would be so ashamed. Besides, a decomposing changeling would be bad for business.
"If there's anything I can do for you, I'm at your service," he said instead.
"Know your enemies…but do business with them always," he mentally quoted.
"Fortunately, we changelings are not as obsessed with acquisition as you Solids," the female changeling said.
"If you say so," Quark said, picking up a glass and wiping it semi-clean with a rag.
"What do you mean?" the female changeling said.
Way to go, microlobes, Quark thought. You should've made some noncommittal noise in the back of your throat, told her you were at her service if she ever needed anything else, and gone back to polishing your glasses. "Dead men close no deals…"
Quark formed his face into his blankest, most businesslike expression and said, "My admittedly limited experience with shapeshifters has taught me that you changelings are just as driven to acquire as us humanoids."
"You just admitted that Solids are obsessed with acquisition, but you also claim that changelings are like Solids in this way," the female changeling said, frowning more than usual. "I will humor you. How are changelings as greedy as Solids?"
"True, you don't desire to acquire food, drink, and adult entertainment, but you don't need those things," Quark said, mentally bribing the Great Exchequer with a few slips of latinum if he would help Quark pull this off. "Still, you desire other things you believe you need. Order. Control. Odo."
"We desire only what is best for Odo," the female changeling said, her voice hardening. "He belongs with his own kind in the Great Link. Life among you Solids has harmed him, but I am striving to overcome and erase much of the damage."
"Odo told us that you sent him out from the Link in the first place to gain knowledge about the universe," Quark said. "In other words, you sold Odo's childhood within the Link so you could acquire knowledge. Sadly, you don't seem to think you got a good deal since you don't seem receptive to Odo's observations about life among Solids."
"If we merely wanted to acquire knowledge, we could have sent out changelings so skilled at blending in with Solids that nobody would have ever suspected their true nature," the female changeling said. "But we wanted to learn about how Solids reacted to the helpless, so we sent out newly-formed changelings instead. We cannot help that Solids mistreated those innocents."
"To quote Rule of Acquisition 19, 'Satisfaction is not guaranteed,'" Quark said. "You yourself have admitted that you view all humanoids to be a threat, yet you still sent defenseless changeling infants into the cold, hard vacuum of space. I'm not condemning you for that; Rule 62 is, 'The riskier the road, the greater the profit.' You wanted to acquire an extra bit of knowledge about humanoids, so you risked infants instead of adults. In some cases, the risk did not equal profit. It happens. That's business."
"Only a Solid could make our decision sound so cold," the female changeling said. "Every time we sent out a changeling, we lost a part of ourselves. Then we found one of these parts, but it refused to rejoin the whole. Of course, no Solid could ever understand the Link."
"So you wish to acquire Odo so your collection will be that much closer to completion," Quark said. "I understand that; many humanoids collect one thing or another. Worf collects Klingon weapons. Garak collects Cardassian literature. Sisko collects ancient Terran artifacts. I collect imaginative holoprograms. I love collectors because they are almost always repeat customers."
"Odo is more valuable than all the foolish Solid collectibles in the universe because he is a changeling," the female shapeshifter said. "I do not wish to merely acquire him so I can put him on a shelf somewhere and look at him only when it pleases me. You can never hope to understand what Odo means to the Link."
"Perhaps not," Quark said. "I am, after all, just a Solid. But it seems to me that you're breaking Rule 3: 'Never spend more for an acquisition than you have to.' As you've obviously discovered over these past few days, Odo wants to return to his people. That's your first obstacle cleared right there: You've convinced your customer that he wants what you're selling. Still, your customer is reluctant to pay your price. So you figure out why. What is keeping Odo from agreeing to your terms?"
Like I'm going to tell her what I know, Quark thought. I'm not that big a greebrain. Let the customer tell you what she knows without letting her know what you know. "Never let the competition know what you're thinking."
"Odo's so-called 'link' with the Solids," the female changeling said. "And his claim that he doesn't agree with our methods of achieving order out of chaos."
So she either doesn't know about Kira or she's pretending to not know about Odo's love for the Major. I wish like destitution I knew which…
"Okay, so you've isolated your customer's problems with the proposition," Quark said. "You've already admitted that changeling life-spans are vastly longer than those of humanoids. If you believe Odo's link with these particular humanoids to be the problem, why not simply wait until these particular humanoids die or move on? These humanoids will be alive for what must be only a small portion of Odo's life, so why not wait for him to reach a natural point of being ready to rejoin the Link? As for your methods, perhaps you could change them, even just a little. Listen to what Odo has to say; perhaps he has fresh ideas. Every good businessman knows the value of fresh blood and new perspectives."
"Those are typical, limited Solid arguments," the female changeling said. "Odo is a part of us, so we shouldn't have to wait for him to be ready to rejoin us. If you lost an arm, would you bargain with your discarded limb or would you immediately reattach it?"
"I would get Dr. Bashir to give me a new one and would thank the Blessed Exchequer that those Federation saps believe in free healthcare," Quark said, grinning impudently.
"The Federation is no longer here," the female changeling said.
"In that case, I'd fly back to Ferenginar and buy the services of the best doctor I could afford. Like I said earlier: the more money you have, the better quality of life you can buy. As for reattachment, sometimes the body rejects the limb and you cast off the arm you tried to reattach. How do you expect the arm to feel about being discarded?"
"Odo harmed another changeling," the female shapeshifter said. "We had to punish him."
"I thought you wished to acquire him," Quark said. "Punishment is bad for business—unless it takes place in a holosuite."
"You are never going to understand us," the female changeling said, pity and condescension in her voice. "And how could you? You are a Solid. I grow weary of this imprecise talk."
"Maybe I can explain your dilemma another way," Quark said. "Okay. You sent out one hundred changelings to explore the universe and eventually return to the Link, right? Odo is one of this Hundred. We already know that another member of the Hundred died from radiation poisoning. That leaves ninety-eight other changelings out of the original hundred still at large in the universe. You have been living without these changelings for, how long? Decades? Centuries? As you said earlier, you changelings have time in abundance. The Link has survived without Odo and the rest of the Hundred for centuries; it will survive even if Odo never returns. Presumably, other members of the Hundred will return to you in good time. So why not wait a little longer? Besides, the longer Odo and the other members of the Hundred remain out of the Link, the more knowledge they will acquire. The more knowledge they acquire, the more value you're getting for your initial transaction. 'The best deal is the one that brings the most profit.'"
"You cannot measure the value of a changeling's life," the shapeshifter said. "Every moment Odo spends with you Solids is damaging him further."
"What about those other ninety-eight changelings still loose in the universe?" Quark said. "You don't seem too concerned about the damage being done to them. Not that there's anything wrong with that; 'The justification for profit is profit.'"
"Of course the Link cares about those changelings," the female changeling said. "They are a part of us. Someday, they will return to us, and we will rejoice in their return as we will have rejoiced in Odo's."
"Good luck acquiring Odo," Quark said. "He's stubborn and rarely does anything other than what he wants to do."
"I've found him to be rather pliant as of late," the female changeling said.
"Well, changelings are pliant in their natural state, right?" Odo said, the grin sliding off his face when he got no reaction from the female changeling.
"We will lower the minefield, and Odo will take his rightful place in the Great Link," the female changeling said. "Not even Major Kira will be able to come between Odo and the Link on that day."
Quark kept his face mask-like, congratulating himself on his masterful tongo face. The female changeling didn't seem to realize what she'd said, nor did she appear to be aware of the brief expression of jealousy that crossed her unfinished face. She clearly understands the 219th Rule: "Possession is eleven-tenths of the law." I guess Odo can't hide anything from her when they are linked.
"I hope you're right," Quark lied. "With Odo gone permanently, my profit margin will go nova."
"Of course, once the minefield comes down, your brother will be executed," the female changeling said.
"'Never allow family to stand in the way of opportunity,'" Quark said, smiling.
"Another one of your Rules of Acquisition, I take it," she said. "Given that attitude, it is unsurprising that you fail to understand what Odo means to the Great Link. We care about Odo more than any Solid ever could."
The Divine Treasury will run out of latinum and Rom will become Grand Nagus before you come close to understanding what it means to care about Odo, Quark thought.
"Yet I'm here making a profit while my brother is locked in a holding cell," Quark said.
"Odo's waiting for me," the female changeling said. "I regret wasting time with a Solid I could have spent with Odo."
"It was a pleasure doing business with you," Quark said, joining his wrists and crimping his hands in the Ferengi sign of respect.
"But you gained nothing from our encounter, as I didn't buy anything," the female changeling said.
Why do you changelings take everything so literally?
"On the contrary," Quark said. "I gained a greater understanding of changeling beliefs and thought processes. Rule of Acquisition 194 tells me to 'know about new customers before they walk in the door,' but how can I do that if I haven't met anyone of the same species as my new customer? Besides, I always have time for anyone willing to get Odo out of my business dealings."
"Talking to you Solids is always a waste of time," the female shapeshifter said, turning around and walking out of the bar.
Actually, I found our talk very enlightening, Quark thought. You have a lot to learn about both acquisition and ownership. You haven't learned that you still have to bag the vole once you've trapped it, and that you have to keep the bag closed once the vole's inside (as I've tried to tell Morn on numerous occasions). Sadly, it seems as if you have learned to follow the Rule that says, "Never hesitate to mislabel a product."
Quark picked up another glass and wiped it down, his mind still working on the problem of how to save his idiot brother.
If I hid the truth from her about my feelings for Rom and my knowledge of Odo's feelings for Kira, maybe she's hiding the truth from me. Maybe she knows something about Odo I don't know, something she found out in that link.
Morn gestured at his empty glass, and Quark refilled it before Morn could start another boring story.
If his lips are glued to a glass, they're not talking to me.
Quark was not an optimist; he understood better than most how quickly fortunes could turn. Life is a giant Dabo wheel, he thought. You place your bets and spin the wheel, but you should never forget that the table is always rigged to favor the house. The Founders don't seem to see life that way. They don't feel the need to learn to understand Odo because they already understand themselves.
As if the Dabo table were linked to him, it gave that somber beep that signaled losses all around. You're right, he thought at the Dabo table. I'd bet a bar of latinum that the female changeling is going to make a mistake eventually, that she won't be able to close the deal because she doesn't understand the customer. Oh, she has possession of Odo now, but she hasn't acquired him. In typical changeling fashion, she sought me out to gain understanding about Odo, but she dismissed my advice solely because it clashed with her own established ideals. "You can't free a fish from water"—or a Founder from the Great Link. She is going to make a mistake, and when that day comes…
Quark looked at the customers in his bar, longing to replace the scowling Jem'Hadar and brutal Cardassians with fun-loving Starfleet and Bajoran officers.
"Keep your ears open," he quoted, his Ferengi face giving nothing away.