JMJ
Chapter Twenty-Six
Hidden in Plain Sight
Bashir blinked and shook his head as he was returned to where and when he was. Where he had been and when, he did not know for sure, but he had a feeling that it was not the future. It was either now or had already happened.
He was staring still at the corner of the biobed, and Pel had not woken after all. It was for the best anyway. Her mind had gone through quite a shock, and induced rest had only ended this morning. As his eyes shifted to her reposed face, he allowed a grim smile upon his.
Her readings were proving her quick recovery. Ferengi were quite good at that, but that did not mean she should be disturbed. The inevitability of her being disturbed no matter what when she woke up touched his mind and lost his smile. She was beyond the risk of death and brain damage, but the emotional damage could not be calculated truthfully until she woke.
The quietude of the little infirmary in Traymak's ship was like a little bubble in the fabric of reality out of time and space. A quiet infirmary usually was when the patient was resting well and out of immediate danger, and Bashir had not yet moved on to a new task. It was an ease of mind. Maybe some people felt the same way after finishing a finely cooked meal and surveyed it with satisfaction before those who would eat it would use it for its intended purpose. There was still the tasting test, but all else was complete.
There had been a time yesterday when Pel had been critical before his conversation with Traymak and the decision to pick up the Nagus and his family.
They were out there now eating breakfast and arguing with Traymak, and Traymak was arguing back. It had been a more difficult task to get the family off the planet in a hurry than an old-fashioned surgery, but they were on the ship now. The events on the planet were probably on their way to the chaotic level that Traymak warned of. He would go out himself in a moment to hear more about it all and decide what best to do, but he could not bring himself to go just yet.
Still recovering from the images of a mother and her child at the mercy of a father deranged, Bashir simply watched Pel's calmly rising and falling chest beneath a thin layer of blanket. The ship was a little clammy as apparently that was how Traymak preferred it, but the infirmary was warm now. He did not want to leave the bubble of warmth. This womb in the ship, almost.
Meegs, he though with severity, however. That was not the same Meegs who visited us at the Tower of Commerce.
Despite the dark event that he had witnessed, this fact was the most dark to Bashir. He had no doubt that the Meegs he heard in his vision was the true Meegs. The fact that he was insane was quite in line with what Traymak implied, but who was the Meegs that they arrested then? The only other question he had at the exact moment about what he had seen was, had this child been born already or not? Meegs could not be that old. If indeed the child was his daughter, of which Bashir also had no doubt, then she could not be that old either, and what exactly was she meant for?
He turned to leave, but just as he did he felt a tug on the cuff of his sleeve. Despite himself he jumped a little, but he was quite collected when he turned around back to Pel.
"Wait," she cracked, her eyes lolling. "Don't go."
"Pel?" he said gently.
She focused hard on him. Her ashen face oranged just a little.
"Oh, Dr. Bashir," she breathed. "It's you, after all."
She closed her eyes.
"Just keep resting, alright?"
"Then don't go," she said. "I don't want the sound of life to be gone."
This time when Bashir smiled, it was far more tender as he leaned down to be more level with her.
"I won't be gone long…" he paused. "Are you feeling ill?"
"I… I don't know," Pel sighed, quickly becoming embarrassed. "I don't know what I feel. I'd rather not feel anything."
Bashir pulled over a stool and reluctantly sat down. Reluctant that he could not speak with Traymak, but in all honesty, not at all reluctant to stay here in this deceivingly safe and lonely hole in the universe.
"Try not to think about that," said Bashir.
But as soon as he was situated, Pell moved. She sat quite upright and without any warning at all, and hardly opening her eyes, she threw her arms about Bashir into a great Ferengi hug. He lurched in surprise.
"Thank you," she said weakly.
Bashir gently hugged her back. "You're welcome," he said.
Her body felt limp and her heavy breathing came shakily from her little body. Immediately, he set to work lying her back down as politely and medically professional as possible.
"It was Traymak who brought you to me, though."
As soon as he said this, he thought that it probably would have been better if he had not. There was no reason to bring up the events that led to her predicament at the moment, and her face clouded over as soon as she registered his words.
She shook her head. "He wasn't betraying me?"
"He was being reckless, but his intention from what I understand was to inform us through you. He's not infected."
"You checked?" she pressed.
"Yes, and you're free of them too. Completely."
"Are they dead?"
"Yes."
Pel paused a moment, and then said very quietly, "You must think I'm so stupid."
"No, I don't think anything of the kind."
"I was an idiot to fall in love with Quark. I was an idiot to think I could make it on my own. I—"
"Pel, no. No." Bashir was quite severe. "Don't do that. What's past is past, and you did make it on your own. You've proven to the whole universe what a strong woman can do when she keeps her head and has the smarts that you do. You brought the Pelipans and the Ferengi together, and that's not going to end just because of this."
"Strong woman of a gree-worm," she muttered unhappily.
"Pel."
"I'm not even a Ferengi anymore."
"You're just tired. Don't think about those things. You'll regret what you're saying later more than what you say you regret now."
"My father…"
"Your father loved you dearly," said Bashir. "All of you. He adored his family, and you're too hard on him and yourself."
Pel looked again steadily at Bashir. He knew that she was reminding herself not to be surprised that Bashir knew her well enough to answer her questions before she could ask them. She went from blank Ferengi stare, to understanding, to disgust, and lastly to simple acceptance. Then her blue-green eyes closed to him again.
"Sorry," she said with a humorless laugh.
"There's nothing to be sorry for. You've gone through something that some people never recover from."
"All the same," said Pel with a sigh. "I think I needed something to stir me up to get me thinking."
Bashir pursed his lips, deciding it best to let her speak instead of chiding her again for thinking too deeply right now.
"I don't exactly regret it, but it was foolish of me to pine after Quark. I tried to deny it, but I was the stupidest little girl when I thought I was so independent. I'm like my mother, after all, and I know I'm way too hard on her."
"You can be," said Bashir.
"I know. She has been through a lot," again Pel paused, thinking a little. "Dr. Bashir?"
"Yes?"
"Do you think that Ferengi can be balanced? Do you think we can find ourselves without going to one extreme or the other, or is that just the way Ferengi are?"
"That's a pretty broad question," Bashir admitted. "I think that Ferengi are very much individuals. It's difficult to speak for them all, don't you agree?
Pel shrugged. She looked at him persistently.
With a nod Bashir gave in. "Well, Ferengi are strong-willed, they're very passionate, and are quite willing to do just about anything to get what they want, but there is something else that I've learned about Ferengi."
"What's that?" Pel laughed weakly and still rather dryly.
"Despite everything, all you really desire is home and quiet. At heart, you are not actually greedy."
"Now you're just teasing me. You deny the holy greed of the Great Material Continuum?"
"No, I mean it, Pel," Bashir insisted. "You are fixated on Rule Number 75, and there is a reason for that. I don't think there is any race I have ever known that is as naturally selfless as yours, so selfless, in fact, that you've convinced yourselves that it is a virtue to give up one's family and home for that "too much of one and not enough of the other". After a thousand years of being told that greed is good and money is everything and that coldness is just business, your hearts as a whole have not become hardened and cruel in the way that that same philosophy would have overcome and destroyed most species within… less than a century. Do you understand what I'm saying?"
Pel shook her head, but her focus was deeply set. She certainly was thinking no more about her own problems as she studied Bashir with the most acute of Ferengi hearing.
"Most of the cruelty you display as a race is more carelessness than true maliciousness. And when maliciousness is there, it is so forced as though everything in your entire being resents it. You go simply mad. You are a gentle and loving people, and no matter how many pirates tried to strip that away from you with greater lust than for any amount of latinum, it cannot be taken from you entirely."
"Maybe it's just because we're too narrow-minded to change," teased Pel.
"Don't even joke about it," said Bashir ever-so-kindly. "I'm mean what I'm saying with every fiber of my being."
"You are indeed the only Ferengiphile I have ever met that was so eloquent and honest," said Pel, "and I know you mean what you say more than most people do, because you have seen more of us than anyone else in the universe has. But you want to know a secret that I know too?"
"What's that?"
"Oh, good, you didn't try to guess," said Pel.
"Well?" teased Bashir.
"You're too hard on yourself too," Pel told him simply. "Too hard on Humans. You must be one with us, after all."
Bashir smiled. "At one time we were. You're what we once could have been."
Pel rolled her eyes as her smile broadened. "Then all those qualities you used to describe us are in you somewhere too otherwise you wouldn't admire them so."
"Fair enough. But to answer your question, yes," said Bashir looking away briefly. "I think that Ferengi can overcome what is happening, and I believe even without knowing clearly the future, that you will, and you specifically Pel will be there to see it. Your perfect balance is desired so deeply just as you and your family always desired and so many other families and people on this planet hidden in plain sight."
Very knowingly, Pel nodded.
"I understand," she said, and she lied back down a little on the biobed with a weary exhale, but at least she no longer looked unhappy.
"Did you…" she asked quietly. "I mean, you've done so much for us. I want to thank you again. I don't even understand really why you've done so much for us. If anyone is selfless it's you."
"I promised," said Bashir, "and I wanted to even if I… tried to go back on it for a while. Things might have gone smoother had I not been trying to go back on it, especially with Quark. For pride mostly."
"Well, we all have to deal with pride," Pel shrugged sleepily.
If he kept speaking quietly to her, she probably would fall asleep. She really was still so very weary from what had happened to her.
"Is Quark really important to history, Dr. Bashir?"
Bashir paused to think about it a moment. Bashir had indeed saved Quark, and he had fulfilled his promise. The fulfillment of that promise gave him a peace that had never quite left him, and Quark himself was quite a new man. Bashir himself often wondered what Quark's purpose was. Why him out of so many other people that probably needed the same rescue that Quark had been given. Was it simply because he was open to it? It obviously was not his simply helping his brother as First Clerk.
Perhaps his presence had slowed something down, and naturally, this slowing-down affected an entire planet of people, but Quark sticking himself into the political sphere was not the real reason. It was something more than that, but what it was, Bashir had not the faintest idea. It could be something as simple as Quark and Sharlezeed's child being of more importance than he was himself. It could be something that Quark had already done that was so small and seemingly insignificant that no one recognized it as important yet, including Quark himself.
"I don't know, admittedly," shrugged Bashir, but as he looked at Pel he saw that she was truly ready for sleep now.
She murmured something back to him that he did not make out. Most of it was garbled in "high e's" besides, which meant it was out of even Bashir's acute hearing. He was only Human even if genetically enhanced.
He left her then quietly, and this time Pel did not stop him, except to whisper, "Thank you for everything."
"You're welcome."
#
An open line was not offered when they hailed the other craft, and no amount of insisting by Nog was helping. Quark frowned as a message did come through, however with no sound and no visual.
"'No lines. In person. Your terms: your ship or mine.'"
It was signed with a name that Quark immediately knew as an alias.
"Who is it?" asked Bennar.
Sharzee heard the recognition in Quark's internal response as he grimly looked at the name; her own sound became quite concerned as she held her breath.
"It's one of the aliases of Lek," Quark said.
"Lek!?" Nog demanded. "You hired him. What does he want?"
Quark fidgeted a little.
"Well," he said a little timidly despite himself. "I hired him to find Krax, and I haven't heard from him in months. I almost stopped thinking about him."
"Do you think he's… been compromised?" asked Bennar.
"What should we do?" breathed Sharzee.
"Well, we're gunna talk to him, what else?" scoffed Quark even still glancing at Nog half hoping he would argue against it with some better plan. "He doesn't make invitations like that for you to deny them, and it must be something pretty serious if he's contacting us this way."
"And suspicious," Bennar grumbled.
"But should we let him come here?" asked Sharzee. "He's…?"
"An eliminator," hissed Quark.
"You hired an eliminator?" Sharzee asked quite concerned now.
"What's an eliminator?" Bennar demanded.
Quark waved his hand. "Mmph— just— he offered a long time ago to help in an emergency after we made his day with the adventure of a lifetime, isn't that right, Nog?"
"If you call that crazy rescue mission an adventure," muttered Nog. "It was kind of more of an embarrassment than anything else. The one good thing about it worth remembering is that the rescue was successful."
"Well, not to Lek," said Quark. "He doesn't say he likes something if he doesn't mean it, so when we were having trouble locating Krax, I hired him— with the Grand Nagus' permission, of course. He seemed suspicious of the intrigue of it, but he took the job fair enough, and then… well, he never came back."
"That's suspicious in itself considering that Meegs said that he had just left Krax on Volchak Prime," remarked Nog. "Why didn't you say anything about it?
"There's been a lot of things on my mind," Quark muttered darkly and rather absently. "Not that that wasn't one of them, but—"
"Mainly that you don't trust Starfleet," Nog sighed.
"Are you sure it was wise to trust an eliminator more?" asked Sharzee. "I mean, I understand your concern about the planet, but wouldn't it have been better to have told them of his disappearance."
"Look, I'm sorry, alright?" Quark snapped. "We can discuss this later. Let's not keep him waiting. Commander Nog? Here or on his ship?"
"If he's giving us the choice, I'd say go to him."
"Why?" demanded Quark.
"Because the obvious choice would be for us inviting him here," retorted Nog.
"But should Quark go alone?" asked Sharzee. "Is that safe?"
"I'm staying with the ship," Nog asserted. "If either of you wish to go with him, go."
"Why with the ship, if something went wrong, wouldn't you be the one to be with him?" asked Bennar.
"The fact that Lek has a ship concerns me," said Nog. "There's something about this that isn't about Krax. Rule number one about space adventures, Bennar, don't question those who have more experience than you."
Quark smiled vilely. "If we all followed that rule where would be Rule of Acquisition Number 99, 'Trust is the biggest liability of all.' But Nog's right. The one with the maneuvering abilities should be the one to stay with the ship, and I think if anyone's going with me, it should be you."
Bennar hesitated.
"Why?" asked Sharzee.
"Because he's the naïve one, and Lek won't look at him, which I need to count on if something does go wrong on his ship."
"Just don't do anything stupid," said Nog.
Bennar huffed.
Sharzee shook her head. "I don't like this."
Quark put his hand on her shoulder. "No one's asking you to."
Lowering her head, Sharzee nodded gravely.
