JMJ

Chapter Thirty-Eight

Celestial Navigation

There was a lot of legal talk and a lot more simple-decision-making based on information by Noi who had been very helpful during the aftermath of Meegs' plan-gone-wrong and those who had been freed by the Fire-rain's guidance. For days, Quark was required to explain to everyone what had happened to him, though he did not mind. He was very practical about it.

Broik wanted to worship him. That bothered him more than anything else. He spent nights at Paik's ship, learned that Sharlezeed's brother was well and Sharzee went home to him and her family for a day or two, but for Quark it was to the capital in which he continued to work day in and day out. After three or four days of this business, Quark was given leave to rest by the Grand Nagus no matter how much Quark protested. He relented only because Belongo seemed to be doing a better job advising about inner-workings of the Tower and business of it than Quark ever had. Also Sharlezeed had returned with love from her family.

Most of the Tower itself was cleared and nice again. Those who had been injured were well again, and those who were dead were buried instead of vacuum desiccated. The organizing of it was done more through Ishka and Belongo than anyone else as Rom was unashamed to admit.

Maybe Belongo would be First Clerk instead of Quark anyway before long.

Needless to say, everything had been so busy that Quark had never gotten the opportunity to get back to his apartment until now.

As Quark opened the door, he saw that someone had gone through the place. Whether trying to plant some sort of false evidence against him or just to spite him, they had obviously enjoyed themselves, and Quark was not surprised.

"What a mess," sighed Sharlezeed picking up a broken piece of pedestal.

Quark shrugged. "I donno…"

He sat down on his couch after brushing some debris away. "Maybe it's just a good excuse to leave the Tower now anyway."

"Why? Where are you going?" asked Sharzee brushing off debris to sit next him.

Quark smiled smugly. "Nowhere far. Just out of the Tower. Closer to the restaurant."

"Were you told this?" asked Sharzee with full seriousness.

But despite her sobriety, Quark laughed. "You're starting to sound like me bugging Bashir."

"Is that a 'no' then?" Sharzee scoffed.

Quark pulled her down beside him.

They could have easily been sitting on a whicker couch with soft plush cushions at twilight in a private portion of beach for honeymooners on Risa rather than in a messy room with thunder rumbling outside the nearest window. The music of the finest singers could have been in the background, but Quark rather felt it was like the music of angels just to hear Ferengi rain and the tender love of his wife as he closed his eyes.

He chuckled some more. "What I was told was only that I must let myself be led where the River guides me, and whatever that is I trust implicitly. Don't you?"

"I try," said Sharzee.

"But you had your own message, didn't you?" asked Quark. "That was why you were so sorrowful, wasn't it?"

"Yes," admitted Sharzee, nestling gently into Quark's side so that Quark could more comfortable wrap his arm around her. "But I was told no future."

"Neither was I, exactly," said Quark. "Just hints. The only one who I think was, was… well, that's not our business."

"You mean, besides Dr. Bashir?" asked Sharzee.

But Quark kept to his word. "How 'bout we go get something to eat in town, Sharzee?"

"But isn't everyone still too busy?"

"I'll make you something myself at that the Slice. It's my restaurant. Though, maybe I should sell it to Broik now."

"I don't think so."

"Why not?"

"I don't think he'll want it," said Sharzee. "He seems perfectly happy working under you. I think it would be awkward for him to suddenly have you work under him. You shouldn't wreck what's working, after all."

Quark shrugged again. "But you're ready to go, then?"

"Yes," said Sharzee, again with full seriousness.

#

It was a strange, surreal sort of evening. The lights were on, but the music was very little. Paik's ship was the busiest place in town, and the restaurant district was fairly deserted, save a few people here and there who were more family of the businesses rather than otherwise.

For the moment, Slice of Nines was darkened, but it was soon lit up and warmed. It was just the two of them. It was almost a belated honeymoon, after all, and Quark made a very sweet and spicy meal of Risian-styled fish fry and sautéed radik with just a little side of seaweed-wrapped shrimp. Sharzee watched with interest, asking here and there about what he was doing, and Quark happily explained.

Then just as he was finished, the sound of the door opening perked both their ears in surprise.

"I'll be back," said Quark. "Pick out something to drink."

Sharzee looked at the drinks available, but Quark did not care too much whether she would be following before long. As he stepped out into the main dining area, he could not help an old shiver down his spine to see his old enemy Brunt looking around at the restaurant's station-like décor.

As their eyes met, Quark recoiled just a little, but it was the sound that brought Quark back to his senses.

Brunt sounded so relieved and so honestly and openly so, that Quark was no longer shocked, but was still recoiling more about the fact that he was not sure he was quite ready to face a remorseful Brunt wanting to worship him like Broik had earlier. However, as Brunt approached there was no groveling. There was no whimpering or fawning.

Silently, meekly, Brunt approached Quark. He reminded him more of the Brunt he had met in that alternate dimension. His sound was very similar. Even his guilt was somewhat reminiscent of the sound of regret in alternate Brunt, but this Brunt was more open than that. Maybe because this Brunt had nothing to hide and Quark and Brunt were no strangers one to another. Indeed, they knew each other in their enemy-relationship so well that they knew each other better than some people knew their friends. There hardly needed to be a reason to speak for a few moments as they stared at each other. Listening.

At last Brunt bowed. To non-Ferengi it might have looked like pathetic groveling, but on Ferenginar it was a most noble sort of bow of one with a most lucrative offer to a most respected personage. Quark consented to it by lifting his head properly in return. He offered a chair to Brunt in that same silence, but Brunt shook his head.

"I won't be long," he said quietly.

Quark nodded somberly.

"I just wanted to say that…"

He paused for some moments. Not fidgeting but very thoughtfully, he stared out in front of him deciding what to say. Even though he likely had had some plan before this, his mind seemed to have gone blank now.

Quark held up his hands. "Brunt, there's nothing that you need to—"

"Thank you," said Brunt.

Quark nodded again. "You're welcome, but for what exactly? You should thank the Dayitela, not me."

"I do. Very much so, I have and I do, but you… One of the people you did think about was me specifically."

"I did?" Quark asked and after a brief pause to consider this, he agreed, "I guess, I did. How do you know?"

"Because… I know," said Brunt.

"Okay."

"You gave me the help I needed to not… throw myself into the Vault. I'll do anything to repay you and make up for everything I ever did to you without embarrassing you. That's why I wanted to catch you alone. I know my reputation."

Brunt smiled despite himself.

Quark sighed after a period of further silence, and he smiled too though far more spritely.

"I don't think anyone's going to remember your reputation anymore. At least not on Ferenginar. Not after all that's happened."

With a jiggly sort of nod, Brunt again bowed his head as to a gracious nagus.

Despite himself— no! With full approval, Quark allowed his natural sympathy and understanding of others to flow gently and casually through him like a small current from the River itself. It was a gift to him that he would never again squander like he had done in resisting its flow for so many years of his life.

Without further hesitation, Quark walked up to his former enemy as he would to any good friend and put his hand on his shoulder in a casual sort of way.

"Say, Brunt?"

"Yeah?" asked Brunt with uncertainty.

"You wanna have dinner with us?"

Brunt looked behind Quark and easily saw and heard Sharzee peeking with care from behind the kitchen entryway.

Brunt stiffened. "I wouldn't want to intrude on you and your wife's…"

"It's not intruding," Quark scoffed, and he turned. "Is it, Sharz?"

"No, of course not. Any friend in need of Quark's is a friend in need of mine," Sharzee retorted. "Besides, this is, after all, a restaurant and bar, and what is it for but a place to serve, and this is my first day on the job. I just had my training session, so we're free to eat, right?"

"Exactly!" said Quark returning to Brunt. "So?"

"Alright," said Brunt bashfully. "I accept. I have no choice but to accept your offer."

"No, you certainly don't," Quark retorted. "It would be foolish to think you could turn down such a lucrative opportunity for culminating our assets in friendship."

"Not to mention a free meal," teased Brunt.

"No, not free, there's mutual benefits on both sides," Quark assured him.

Brunt nodded and followed Quark further in towards a table.

"First allow me to formally introduce my wife and new partner of my enterprise of life—"

"Sharlezeed, daughter of Zarga," said Brunt bowing respectfully. "I have heard of you, but never had the pleasure of meeting you in person."

"The pleasure is mine," insisted Sharzee.

"You really are too kind," Brunt insisted as he took his seat.

"Nonsense," said Quark. "You're practically family having made your business our business for so long. In fact, if you need a job, I do have an opening."

"I doubt that," said Brunt with a grin. "But I'll keep that in mind."

"Well, I am planning on opening a new restaurant," said Quark candidly. "What do you think, Sharzee? Would Pelipans have a taste for Quark's?"

"I think they would," agreed Sharzee.

Brunt's ears were almost bright yellow. "Thanks. Both of you, really."

"You're welcome, Brunt," said Quark holding up his glass to him. "Very welcome! Think of this as a late Arka Days' dinner."

"To the Arka Days," said Brunt gently.

"Arka pe bett Sharo ga," said the three Ferengi in a cultural cheer drumming the table twice.

"To Arka pe bett Quazila pe!" said Sharzee.

Quark shook his head.

"That's what you should call your restaurant on Pelipa," said Brunt now warmed by his sip of spirits. "Quazila's for short. The Pelipans delight in riddles, I understand. That would make you appealing. You are, after all, the Star's seeker in the sense that you are not just the seeker of the Star but the seeker who seeks all for the Star."

"And what about you?" demanded Quark. "The 'Straight prow upon the River.' It means more now than it did before."

"I will try to live up to it," Brunt said solemnly closing his eyes with emphasis.

"You mean you will try to not get in the way of it," remarked Quark.

Brunt frowned, studying Quark carefully. "I didn't know that the Hidden Profiters believed in names to such a degree."

Quark smiled lightly and shook his head. "Not anymore than any other Ferengi. It's not a matter of trying to live up to something placed upon us like a promotion. The best we can be is who we were made to be. We just have to let ourselves work they way we were designed."

#

"You lied, didn't you," said O'Brian suddenly.

Nog turned abruptly to the Human. Of course he had known he was there, but he had not been expecting such a confrontation. Eyes wide with horror, he quickly turned away from him again in a pitiful attempt to hide his consternation. He shrugged carelessly, blinked glazed, and gave an impartial sniff as he went back to the computer he was looking at. Though, O'Brian would easily know that he had not been working or even recreating. His screen was blank now, but all he had been looking at were star maps with no particular reason for it.

"The whole thing is a lie anyway," said Nog after hardly a moment when he realized that O'Brian meant to stay his course— of course he did; he was O'Brian. "The New Course wasn't profitable. The Great River allowed its dissolution. I'm not blaming my uncle, but I wish it wasn't him who had to be the catalyst of this. Only Ferengi will hear the subtleties of it in a way that will profit them best. Rule of Acquisition Number 190 'Hear all, trust nothing.'"

"But you did lie to the captain about your experience."

"I didn't lie to the captain."

"Did you tell your father before you left?" O'Brian demanded.

Nog could imagine that some of this came with the experience of having children. After all, Miles O'Brian did have two of them, and Molly, especially was always trying to keep secrets from her father while confiding in her mother. O'Brian was good at figuring them out, anyway, and Nog only knew about it from hearsay. His relationship with his children, however, was not the same thing as Nog's relationship with his family. His father was Nagus, his grandmother Shadow Nagus, his uncle the most infamous bartender in the Alliance, and the whole family was now linked with the very complicated family of Zek. Nog was a Starfleet officer. It used to make him proud and arrogant. These days he felt it humbled him, and he took none of his experiences for granted.

Nog sighed.

O'Brian answered, "It may not be my business to know what you saw but it is my business to—"

"It's everyone's business," Nog interrupted, and O'Brian let him do it if only with a raised brow as he waited for further explanation of such a statement. "I didn't lie to the captain that I experienced nothing. I told the truth that what I did experience was a lie and therefore irrelevant."

"You know that for sure?"

"You and I both know that no ancient Dayitela commands the hearts of Ferengi. There's only the River and the Blessed Exchequer. If the Dayitela existed in the way that my uncle thinks he does now, there would be two Rivers in direct contrast with each other."

"From what I understand, that's what your uncle does believe."

Nog rolled his eyes and turned to O'Brian. The absence of their mutual friend Dr. Julian Bashir was like a vacant hole in the ship into some place between dimensions.

"Well, why did we send away Dr. Bashir?" asked Nog.

"Because he can't help the Alliance and the Federation at the same time. Nothing more than that."

"I don't think that's what you told Dr. Bashir," said Nog.

O'Brian frowned darkly, but his vision was not shaken from Nog. In fact his fix on his eyes was only all the stronger and as fiery as Nog wanted them to be.

"Well played," said O'Brian; but despite the irony in his voice, his face softened.

This surprised Nog, because O'Brian was not easily stared-down.

"If the beliefs of my ancient past were placed before me as yours are to you, after so many centuries of beating it down as backwards and even dangerous, I would not accept it."

"Of course not. We grow up, not down," said Nog.

"If you experienced something, that doesn't mean it's spiritual. The very fact that you lied, no matter how you put it, still is a lie. He didn't ask you if you believed in what you saw, only if you saw anything at all, so that we all could prove the truth of what happened with as much evidence as possible. It could help us figure out what really happened to your uncle and everyone else involved."

"Did you experience anything? Even Leeta experienced it."

"But deep down everyone's a Ferengi, aren't they?" O'Brian demanded, now standing his ground with his true authority.

Like a Chihuahua to a mastiff, Nog bristled. He was so much like his uncle and his father, and he was feeling very self-conscious of that fact. He was raised by them, and he was just as much a Ferengi as they were, through and through. He prided himself in it, but right now more than ever, because he felt he was being more a Ferengi than either of they were. He felt that O'Brian was more a Ferengi than what Quark had been reduced to.

"In theory!" agreed Nog. He thought about pressing again if O'Brian had experienced anything, but he changed his mind. "I'll tell the captain once we're out of the Alliance.

"Will you? Or is that a lie too?"

"I thought it was the belief of the Federation that a lie for a good purpose is necessary for keeping the peace."

O'Brian snorted.

"I saw—!" Nog began.

"Don't tell me!" O'Brian said with a humorless laugh. "Tell the captain."

Nog threw his arms across his chest defiantly. "I thought you wanted to know?"

"I don't want to know what you saw, I only asked to know why you lied?"

"Because I almost believed it until everyone else said they'd felt it too. Then I thought about it and decided it was a lie that I saw the Dayitela."

He choked.

O'Brian was taken aback as Nog's face swelled.

"He was a bright star. A sun. An absolute arka. I didn't believe in it afterwards, but I did then. He didn't make me do anything. He didn't say anything. I did the talking, but it was what he didn't say. He knew pain. He was not a hot, calculating businessman listening to my every twitch for weaknesses. He was like… He understood my frustration. Everything about him moved like a… a balm in current of… I didn't…"

Nog went silent. O'Brian said nothing either but was obviously digesting this emotional outburst and trying to decipher it in a logical Human manner. But perhaps it was something deeper.

Nog did not much care to read or learn about Human history deeper than what was offered in Federation studies, but he had once been in the empty building on an island in the city of Paris. The great hall had nothing in the center anymore, but all the artifacts were still in place. It was an awe-inspiring place, as hallowed as it was frightening. Its ghosts were mournful rather than vengeful and somehow that had made it more disturbing than had it been a place of restless retribution.

Thinking back on it now, it was as if the woman with that dead man in her arms upon the high platform at the end was crying. He could even now see tears streaking that otherwise smooth stone face, and those tears were not only for the man dead but for all those who looked upon her grief with unaffected apathy.

Nog turned away, but O'Brian's eyes did not leave him.

"You should ask instead what happened to the lie who was Meegs."

"You mean the 'Meegs' that the Alliance originally arrested?" asked O'Brian wearily. "What about him?"

"He remembers nothing from before his experience."

"Like the little girl?"

"They're both like infants now," said Nog, "and like infants they know only the planet that they hear now, and the planet is not the one I heard so well even without living on it."

Here O'Brian could find a place to smile; though Nog was quite resentful of it. O'Brian was a parent, after all.

"That's the way it always is for infants. It's always the potential of the best of the world as it is presented before them."

"Then that hope is a lie," said Nog.

"So did your uncle say," said O'Brian in full seriousness again as he put an affectionate hand on his younger friend's shoulder, "about a lot of things."

"Oh, my uncle…" heaved Nog. "Do you think he's insane?"

"No, but the thing about truth is that it shouldn't be what we want it to be or what we grew up thinking it was in our generation. We should want it because it is the truth. That's why it's so hard to keep it."

"And that's the reality of a man who journeys and experiences the whole universe."

"Some people on Earth used to call it, traveler's sickness. That once one heard what so many people thought was the truth but was so contradictory one from another, that traveler would believe nothing. Truth would become relative. Then truth would be what that traveler wanted it to be."

"Ferengi never had that problem with the Great Material Continuum."

"To be open to new ideas has been a truth in much of Humanity for a long time, and it's the way that became dominant long before we officially came into contact with Ferengi."

"Yes, I can see that being a problem in Humans."

"All you can do is cling to what logic tells you."

"What if you don't know what's logical anymore?"

"Then do you think faith's all you have left?"

"Rule Number 79 'Beware the Vulcan greed for knowledge,'" Nog dodged. "If we'd known about Humans then we might have changed 'Vulcan' for 'Human'."

#

Rom had avoided the Nagal Residence during most of his reign, though these days it was only to get away that he took up residing there now. To Quark it still seemed that unless they were actually going to sell the place, it would be a shame to leave it sit only to be kept up by custodians and servants with no one actually living in it. Despite Quark's dreams as a meager bartender of those gleaming halls with even extrication station seats made of gold-pressed latinum, he had to admit that it did almost make one feel as though touching an artifact was something of a sacrilege— hardly a place to make oneself at home with ease.

As a servant took his raincoat, Quark almost protested. Though, he knew no one would expect it of him, he paid the box just inside, which had not been taken down from this palace. He presented himself to Leeta, who was just coming through the round doorway further in.

"Is Rom at home?" Quark asked.

"Yes, I think he's listening to music."

Quark paused. "I think I hear it. Thank you."

"Is something wrong?" asked Leeta as Quark moved forward in a hurry after the sound.

Quark grinned and walked backwards a step or two. "Does there need to be something wrong to talk to my brother?" He spread his arms out into a shrug.

Leeta smiled and let him continue; but she sounded somewhat sad. Quark knew why. His heart went out to them. The feeling of one's son turning you a cold shoulder— not until so recently had he understood at all.

Never had he given it thought. It was something far more instinctive, even possessive, than a feeling for one's nephew. It had little to do with the level he cared for Nog, he still was not Quark's son. He was Rom's. It was such a simple laying-out of fact, and yet it was usually the simplest things that the sentient mind felt most keenly. How already he felt that same possessiveness of that child not yet born of his own waiting for that chance of birth inside Sharzee at every moment. He could hear that child already when he was near her.

Either way, he knew from experience the funk Rom would be in when he found him in person listening to that old Human style of music that both he and his son knew so well from that holo-program back from Deep Space Nine. It was the kind of music in old Human Noire where someone would be stone-drunk and the detective could get nothing out of him.

He almost expected to find Rom in a holo-room doing that very thing, but he was not in a room at all. Quark found him through a chamber decorated like a museum out onto a covered balcony looking out over the city. The rain was coming straight down, so that the jellyfish-like awning was all that was needed. The air that proceeded from the openness between balcony rail and awning was welcomingly warm and sticky.

The music was playing from just inside and Rom was hardly enjoying the scenery so much as he was looking at his PADD. He looked more simply perturbed than sad.

Quark leaned noisily against the wall just inside the chamber from the circular open door to the spherical balcony.

Still Rom did not look at him as he paced about.

"Hey, Rom!" said Quark over the music.

Rom started, almost dropping his PADD.

"Brother!" exclaimed Rom; he turned around to his PADD again. "I'm working, that's all. There's nothing wrong with me."

"Right," Quark scoffed. "Tell me another one."

Rom rolled his eyes.

"I was expecting a guy in a black suit pouring glasses of Champaign," said Quark.

"Nog's not coming back," said Rom firmly.

"You don't know that."

"That's what Leeta said. She already said more than what you're probably going to say anyway," said Rom. "It's okay. I'll get over it."

"She talked like a wife, Rom," retorted Quark.

For a split second Rom looked quite offended as though Quark was insinuating some sort of inferiority about wives, but as he listened a moment, he relented sheepishly to the fact that his brother meant no disrespect about anyone.

"You feel like it's your own fault," Quark shrugged almost carelessly, "and Leeta says it's not your fault, and you argue back and forth till she says you can't change the past and Nog's a grown man, and he has to make his own decisions. She feels that someday he'll come round anyway because you all love him and he loves you, and then you get all quiet cuz you know it's not about love, really. At least not in that way, and then she tries to reassure you and talks about it all in a more spiritual light. Offering prayers for him might sway him and that at least is something productive to do, but it doesn't change the way you're funk is at the moment, and…" Quark paused. "Am I right?"

"Pretty much," Rom sighed; he slumped onto a bench. "I never was a spiritual person."

"Mmm," shrugged Quark. "I don't know. You seemed to have a sense for simplicity about the same life I always over-thought about."

"You mean when you'd call me an idiot?"

Quark sneered. "Talk about responsibilities, right? I probably helped wreck your natural simplicity to make it idiocy. In fact, in the words of the infamous Dr. Julian Bashir, 'even saying 'I think' is a lie, because… I know it!'"

Rom snorted.

Quark sighed. His heart really did go out to him. Even without his own child in the works, he would have felt the same pity. The funny thing was, though, that even now he did not feel concerned about Nog. He even tried to, but he couldn't.

"It may not mean much," he said more soberly now as he sat down on another bench near at hand. The door to the inner chamber shut automatically, muffling the music a little. "But you should probably trust Leeta's instinct on this."

"What do you mean? That Nog will come around?" asked Rom. "I don't expect him to. Maybe he really didn't experience anything. Maybe it is all just a lie."

Quark put his chin in his hand idly as he stared steadily at his brother. "Do you really believe that?"

"No," said Rom without hesitation.

"Then I wouldn't worry about Nog. The very fact that he was so quick to lie about it seems to me the best proof of that."

"There's no reason for him to trust what we believe. He loves us, but he thinks he's the one taking care of us, you know," said Rom.

"He does a good job of taking care of us when he's around," Quark agreed.

"And I know he doesn't really respect me very much."

"Mmm, maybe, maybe not," said Quark, "but I think he'll come back, Rom, and not cuz of any of that."

"Then why?"

"Because he trusts in the just nature of the Great River in a way that was more to the truth than what you or I believed," said Quark. "He believed what we both desired the River to be, and somehow that was closer to the truth than what any commentary on the Rules of Acquisition could impart on him. Our actions spoke louder than words, so to speak."

"You mean…" said Rom after a sluggish moment of thought, but his mind was clearing up now.

"He just has to come to terms with the fact that the answer he's seeking is right in front of him and it isn't hard. He just has to look up and see the stars."

"Rule of Acquisition Number 75?" asked Rom.

"Not all that shimmers is latinum."