JMJ

Chapter Nine

"Free Advice is Seldom Cheap"

With Zek ordering a Calaman sherry, which happened to be the most expensive drink in the house made even more expensive with the splash of Tarahong flavor in time for Arka, Quark simply ordered himself a glass of synthehol. Not being very hungry either, all he had to eat was a cheap bowl of lokar beans and on-sale, day-old tube grubs, and he watched as the former Nagus dined on a far more ambitious cuisine. At least the former Nagus remembered he was paying for that so far; though Quark feared that by the end of the meal he would be paying for everything. As Quark fiddled with his finger tongs and picked at a bean or two before popping a tube grub into his mouth instead, he could not help but roll his eyes.

"So… the spa's going well?" asked Quark amiably.

"Eat, man, eat!" insisted Zek, and not until Quark took another mouthful did Zek begin again. "Business is booming, Quark, I'm glad you asked."

"Good," said Quark with a shrug. "That's all I can say. I'm… happy for you. Heh!"

"Oh, you're envious, I can tell. What, with your own little bar and restaurant just barely staying afloat on the planet. Y'know what they say about business that stays on the planet?" teased Zek in between healthy bites of a rich Clarusian seal-blubber stew and sautéed domestic kelp salad sprinkled with an assortment of Ferenginar's finest beetles.

"It's easier to run aground closer to shore," Quark and Zek said together.

"But seriously," said Zek in a very non-serious tone. "It's not easy being in politics and running a business at the same time, is it?"

Quark only smiled politely as an answer.

"I ran several businesses back in my day!" said Zek. "And people wonder why a mind wears out. The best multitasker in the universe is a Ferengi, boy, and don't let anyone tell you different." Here he thrust his finger-tongs towards Quark almost past the acceptable line of personal space. "A Clarusian spider-squid may have two hundred eyes, but the mental eyes of the Ferengi are more than any pair of physical eyes."

Quark gave a somber nod. "Well put."

"Especially when those mental eyes are combined with the true lobes that only a Ferengi can have," Zek added sinisterly before chirping, "Eat! Eat!"

"What?" laughed Quark. "Are you trying to fatten me up for your second course?"

Zek laughed back, but once he recovered he held up a hand in full seriousness despite his continued smile. It was more of a Ferengi business smile now. His jollity began to sound more sober despite the long sip of sherry. It seemed to sharpen inner resolve rather than dull him.

"It's good you mention deceit," he said simply. "It proves you're still thinking. That's always the key when being in charge, isn't it?"

"You don't have to be a Ferengi for that to be the case," said Quark without irony.

"No, you don't, but isn't it amazing what power does to a person? Look what it did to my family. Look what it did to yours! Ha! It's more dangerous than any amount of latinum, wouldn't you say?"

"Well, one could argue that the greatest source of power is latinum."

Zek nodded and sneered the wider. "Power can always be converted to latinum, but latinum can't always be converted to power. That's one thing I'm not afraid to admit I've learned in my old age."

"Like when?" Quark demanded, sincerely curious now.

Zek may not always be there in that aging mind of his, but even during his weirdest episodes, he was never stupid. It was making Quark wonder if there was truly more to this meeting than simply teasing Quark about Zek's spa outdoing Taste of Nines.

"Not everyone uses latinum as their main source of currency even if I do have the claim to my name of at least forty different systems turning their main currency into latinum."

More like ten, but still, yes, he had a point.

"But in the end, Power speaks louder than money."

Quark paused, holding his breath in anticipation at the emphatic pause. "Yes?"

Again, Zek laughed back in chipper spirits as though the whole thing had been a gag. "You should see your face, Quark. Never were good at keeping your heart off your sleeve, were you? Not good for business, you know."

Quark sighed.

"Neither is all that sighing," Zek said. "Have you ever heard me huff? Have you ever heard me sigh? Have you ever heard me tighten in any way?"

"Well… rarely."

He could have mentioned a few times, but the sentiment was true. Quark revealed himself far more than Zek ever had.

"And you know what I hear about you?"

"Hmm?" Quark moaned after a sip from his cube glass. "No. Enlighten me."

"That you've forgotten your power!" Zek scolded. "You were far better at utilizing your power of persuasion back when you were a bar proprietor. Back in what Hew-mons call 'your comfort zone'."

"Well, I don't really have a choice, now do I?"

"Last time I heard you, you had more confidence than I ever heard you. I admired that. That's what gave me initiative to buy up your space. More confidence than anyone in your family."

"Even Moogee?" asked Quark.

"Your mother," said Zek with high affection, "is many things, Quark. All of them admirable no matter which way you cut it in all the sense of what it means to be a Ferengi. In some ways, she's more Ferengi than any of us, but there's one thing you have over her now."

"What's that?" asked Quark not understanding the flow of conversation now at all; it all was just a mess of half-formed ideas.

The fact that most of them were admittedly very interesting half-formed ideas made it all the more maddening as though Zek was leading him through the most fantastic maze along sporadic synapses through the thoughts in Zek's very brain.

"You don't sound like a Ferengi."

Quark winced; his own brain staggered. "What?"

Again Zek laughed and encouraged Quark to eat. Just barely did Quark take a bite before Zek insisted that he eat a flake of his kelp. Quark just barely managed that before Zek swiped his plate back again.

"Good, isn't it?"

"Sure, but—"

"That'll cost you a slip," said Zek gravely.

Quark rolled his eyes. "Only if this counts as the tip."

"You need five slips to be a real tip," warned Zek, but he did not press about it.

"Zek!" Quark insisted now. "If this is a moral business lesson I'm afraid I'm really not following you. You're making less sense than a Bajoran ranjen monk giving a lesson on spirituality and understanding the Prophets."

"I take that as a compliment," Zek shrugged. "Wait patiently for the wisdom of the Ferengi profits."

Quark stopped himself from sighed this time.

"Well, for one thing," Zek went on. "You'll agree there are Ferengi and there are Ferengi, if you follow that."

"I'm pretty sure I do, but everyone's a Ferengi, right?"

"An orthodox Ferengi, I could say, but even what that means is under debate, now isn't it? With the Hidden Profiters? You've gone honest. Everything in you reveals it. Your conscience is louder than your voice."

"I think this is getting a little too philosophical for a friendly lunch now."

"A conscience makes you vulnerable, but…"

"But?" asked Quark wearily.

Zek leaned in closely and motioned with his finger for Quark to lean in closer too. Quark reluctantly obeyed and tried not to squint too hard.

"It also makes you unpredictable. You know the Rules of Acquisition…"

"'There's nothing more dangerous than an honest businessman?'" Quark offered.

"That goes without saying," shrugged Zek. "Rule of Acquisition Number 59, 'Free advice is seldom cheap.'" He paused. "For the person receiving the advice and the one giving it, and usually you never take my advice anyway no matter how plainly I give it to you."

Quark might have asked why he did not give this kind of "advice" to Rom, but as Rom was very ill right now it seemed hardly befitting even if it did slip to the edge of his tongue before he took it back. Besides, Zek was still going.

"You're the most hated person on Ferenginar right now."

"I am, huh?" Quark laughed; despite himself Quark felt a cold shiver down his spine.

Zek was correct in at least the sense that he was a subject of heated debate. He was still thought of with disdain by most New Coursers; the Old Acquisitioners never liked him in the higher ranks and still thought him stupid and incapable. The rest of the population could not seem to decide whether his conversion to Hidden Profiter was sincere or not, and it seemed that most people who actually admitted to liking him were fans of his bar. Though, he knew that his stand on the removal of taxes and government being handled more locally and with less interference in private affairs was still the stance of more than fifty percent of the population— at least sixty percent on Ferenginar maybe more since a lot of people who distrusted the government since the reforms did not always vote at all. But they looked up more to Traymak, one of the leading members of the Congress of Economic Advisers, these days for such things rather than Quark.

Quark was a wild card. Unpredictable. The resentful brother of the Nagus. The untrustworthy son of Ishka. A maverick to some, a black sheep to others. The unprofessional meddler of the Nagus' family. It all left Quark in a rather dangerous position, he saw, and he turned to Zek again rather uneasily at the magnitude of this thought concentrated together in a way that he had never quite thought of before.

"You did it again," teased Zek who had been listening all the while with deep intensity. "Heart always on your sleeve. Ask yourself this, Quark; if someone didn't want to assassinate Rom, what would be other motives for removing him?"

"To… confuse the work with the Pelipans?"

"The Pelipans thrive on this kind of thing," said Zek. "This'll make them more prepared to fight with you than not. No. Not the Pelipans unless it begins to make the people of Ferenginar fear they'll start a war about it, but I doubt it. If I were you, I'd count them as an asset already. Besides, from what Leeta said, you're on Mrs. Aploos' good side, anyway."

"Because of something to do with…" Quark paused unsure if he should mention Krax, but Zek was far too into the conversation now to hold back.

"My son?" sneered Zek. "You're still missing the obvious, no matter who did it. Who exactly did it isn't the first thing that should be considered."

"Do you think he did it?"

"I don't know who did it any more than you do, but you do have a lot of enemies. There are a lot of suspects to choose from. The topic, Quark! Stay focused. You would if this was a game of dabo with the royal jewels of Hupyrian on the table now wouldn't you?"

"But I don't understand."

"You know what a good DaiMon does when he's in danger with an enemy that his crew doesn't know about yet?"

"He bails out," answered Quark quickly.

"How?"

"Well, it depends on the situation, doesn't it?"

"You're thinking too hard. When you ran the bar on DS9, what would happen if an old unhappy customer who did not know what you looked like wanted to know where the boss was to take recompense out of you, especially violent recompense?"

"I guess, back then, I would have told them someone else was the boss. But Rom didn't do this to himself!"

"No, but divide the example. If you were working on both sides of a war and you needed it to end in your favor and you were on good terms with both leaders on both sides, but you knew that the leader in charge of one side was not going to be hated enough to make the point clear…"

Quark's eyes grew wide with realization.

"Now how much did that cost you to figure out?" asked Zek dryly.

Quark continued to stare, fully digesting what was being told to him. "You mean someone wants me to be here to blame me for something that hasn't happened yet, because I'm already a volatile subject?!"

"Dabo!" whispered Zek patting the table in congratulations, and he drank from his sherry.

"But why not Rom?"

"There would be less profit in blaming Rom. Those up in high rafters catch the echoes of all that goes on more than Lappan bats. The shadow Nagus would be more profitable, but then they would not have as ripe of a subject to blame. Think of it more as you're one of the most expensive men in the Alliance right now rather than the most hated. I think the only one more expensive right now is my son."

"And here I thought you were a senile old man," Quark breathed.

"I am a senile old man, and don't forget it," Zek warned.

"Of course, Sir."

"And you're paying for the whole meal!" declared Zek.

"But—!"

"Are you gunna say 'no' to a senile old man!?"

Quark shrugged and rolled his eyes.

"Say it!" snapped Zek.

"'Free advice is seldom cheap.'"

"That's my boy! Rom, right?"

"But what do I do now?"

"I already told you! Several times! You don't listen. You never listen. You're almost as bad as Krax!"

"Do you have any idea where Krax might be?" pressed Quark.

"How should I know where Krax is? The only thing I know about Krax is that he's a power grabbing idiot, and if he has anything to do with this whole thing, I wouldn't be surprised. Just like he tricked his cousin Belongo so that he'd get arrested in Federation Space."

"He did?"

"A power-grabbing idiot. Of course, he knew one thing, that I wouldn't take Belongo seriously as a successor letting himself get duped like that by Krax of all people. I didn't even though I knew, but it doesn't change the fact that the entire Alliance would've gone straight to the Vault if that sorry measly space between Krax's sorry lobes was ever the brains behind the title of Nagus. Worse than Brunt even… 'the best deal, is the one that makes the most… profit!'"

And with a chipper grin like a child, Zek began to eat away at his stew and salad leaving Quark to stare emptily at him.

"I'm thinking of ordering dessert…" Zek muttered. "My favorite better still be served here."

He smiled at his servant, who turned his chair around for him so that he could hail a waiter.

"But Zek! Zek!"

"Don't 'but Zek' me. Go speak with your mother," retorted Zek after making his order.

"What does my mother have to do with this?"

"With you being a whiny baby, that's what. 'Power divides and profit conquers'. Now I'm enjoying my desert. I coined that, you know."

"That's it?"

"Well, what do you want me to say, the failure of Nagus Smeet wasn't his lobes for business, it was his devotion to the beliefs of the Hidden Profiters?"

"Really?"

"There, you did it again! That's why I don't give you advice. This generation is hopeless, I tell Ishka! Completely hopeless. Now, eat the rest of your meal and go make a sorry excuse for yourself as Standing Nagus."

"But I thought the Hidden Profiters were hidden?"

"For thousands of years?" scoffed Zek. "Hardly. Though, the liquidators were good at keeping it a secret even from quite of few Nagi, I understand."

"But—"

"I didn't compete in the Global Tongo Championship just for the jackpot winnings and the oo-mox. I went because there was no better place to 'hear all and trust nothing' than when all your best subjects are having a good time and drinking a few too many bottles of imports and intoxicated with dainty fingers. The best dirt on the whole planet is within your hearing…"

"But then why weren't they revealed?"

"There would have been no profit in it. We're civilized. What were we going to do? Round them up in camps? Make martyrs out of them? What are we, ancient Hew-mons? Modern Cardassians? The liquidators just did not bring attention to them even if they did give them a hard time if they brought too much attention to themselves. Not since before the Alliance and some of the pirates had them eaten alive by gree-worms when they wouldn't cooperate has anyone harmed them or brought any attention to them…" he motioned to the blue jewel shaped geometrically like a gree-lily pad as a symbol of the sacrifice a person should be willing to make for what one knew was right— the one just below Quark's throat.

A wave like a hot noxious breath passed through Quark, and it wasn't Zek's breath. He could almost see himself bound and gagged on the giant lily-pad himself, sprayed with sweet sauces and leech blood so that the gree-worms would come and devour their prey— long before the Ferengi marauders made use of pyrocyte to be rid of their enemies, the ancient pirates simply used barbaric fear. Guilt swept over him like a hot wave.

"Your honest streak is more dangerous than any Ferengi deceit," Zek said.

"But it broke up the tyranny that was growing on Ferenginar."

"Oh! Did it?"

"It broke up the fear of oppressors and brought back the love of our heritage and who we are as Ferengi."

Zek laughed. "And exposed a weak point to all our enemies to exploit. Even the more barbaric ones. Don't get me wrong. I'm not a Hidden Profiter, nor do I have much sympathy for their cause even if I sympathize with their existence, but they are a necessity to the balance of Ferenginar. A delicate balance, which has kept the Alliance afloat for nearly 10,000 years. Everything had its place, and just as the Marauders had theirs, the Hidden Profiters had theirs, but between Leeta trying to get rid of the Marauders and you enticing the Hidden Profiters from their holes, the whole balance is over."

Now Quark bristled. He couldn't help himself. "If the balance was so perfect, why did you change the laws about the role of women in our society to begin with? Wasn't that a delicate balance?"

"It was a shifting. It was time to end that straying from the Course. It went well beyond anything stated in the Rules of Acquisition."

"I know and I agree now. I'm convinced, but there had to be a different way to go about it. Did it have to lead to Women's Restitution?"

"My own guilty conscience got the better of me," said Zek. "Only a few hundred years had geeiska reduced to ska*. I was correcting a minor setback that had us only slightly off course. Ishka made me face something that had been on my mind since my reign in office began, admittedly, and between Ishka and Pel…"

"Don't you know how scared some of these women are by being the constant subject of civil unrest and how much a balance was upset by forcing women who didn't want to work and wanted to raise their families instead into thinking they were lazy and evil if they didn't go out and work?

"And what about the over-taxation of citizens and the push for everyone to be paid exactly the same no matter how hard they work or how important their job so that everyone would lose their incentive to do anything but be customers expecting everything to be free and the government to give them that, and now so many of them have become dependent on the government and have begun to hate themselves and fear everything we have ever been so much that they hate the good as much as the bad?"

Zek smiled; though there was a touch of regret in his sound. A softness in his eyes bespoke sympathy he could not hide.

"Spoken like a true conservative."

"What?" Quark demanded, and he shook head rebelliously. "I'm not a conservative. A conservative is someone who is 'always willing to pay more for a taste of the past than a feast of the present' and the opposite are people who 'fear what they don't know,' so that 'they're willing to pay what they don't mean. Refer then to rule Number 1', which I'm sure someone like Brunt or Krax are doing right now, but I'm a Ferengi!"

"And a Ferengi," said Zek unaffected by Quark's zeal, "is one who remembers 'don't be afraid to mislabel a product.' There's one thing about business, Quark, that eventually every great entrepreneur needs to learn one day in his life…"

"And that is?"

"No matter how much you say 'satisfaction is not guaranteed', the customer is always right… especially when those customers are out where the 'stars are made of latinum.' Even if I'll admit… it got a little out of hand. For that I thank you and your work and that of Dr. Bashir even— and especially Pel…" Then he added gently, almost fatherly, "Why do you think it was time for me to retire, Quark?"

For the first time in Quark's life he wanted to throw something in that face, but he didn't. He just slumped in his seat and took a slug of synthehol. "I know."

"And my good-for-nothing son…" said Zek carelessly. "Well, maybe Belongo might have been the better choice, after all. He could probably testify against Krax, anyway. I hear his sentence is ending soon for good behavior."

"Good for him," muttered Quark.

"So are you gunna take my advice, or aren't you?"

Again Quark sighed.

The danger of not thinking of the universe in terms of business was always that it could be replaced by sentimentalism. No matter what a person's convictions, if it was not cold or calculating, it was easy to lose sight of logic. Though, Quark even in his youth had already turned the beliefs of meeting the Divine Exchequer with all that one earned in latinum during the course of one's life into a sentimental thing more than any of his race he had known before him. He had already turned it into the deep devotion he now found worthy in the beliefs of the Hidden Profiters, but in the end, he now could not be angry with Zek for speaking like a businessman.

It was nothing personal, how he belittled Quark now. It was just business. It was true advice. In fact, it was more truly sentiment and the liking of Quark and care for the planet that propelled Zek to reveal all this 'fatherly' affection. More than his own father ever had, admittedly.

Instead of being angry, Quark now felt truly grateful. A fear crept upon him too that the fire and love that was within the Hidden Profiters could be used to stoke barbarism if exploited the right way, especially if that interference was from outside Ferenginar. The Hidden Profiters themselves were against giving into emotionalism, but most young Ferengi were so empowered by the emotions of freeing themselves from oppressors that may or may not exist that he knew Zek was right about being careful with his beliefs.

Everything that was happening to please the customers among the stars, however, as Zek suggested was putting the whole planet just as at risk. They were becoming all that Quark had despised about Earth when he read about its history, all that he feared about Bajor when he felt sorry for them during their occupation by the Cardassians, and all that he had not taken seriously about the Cardassians. Passion and fire was all the result of not thinking of things in terms of cold clammy marshy seas filled with chill gold-pressed latinum and profit and left the politics to other people while you danced in their wake. Simply relenting to the idea that "nature decays, but latinum is forever" saved the Ferengi from seeing profit in revenge or to killing oneself over fleeting pleasures with "take joy from profit and profit from joy" or the similarly stated "Ask not what your profits can do for you, but what you can do for your profits." It was a cold world, but a simple one and one that had lasted for over 9000 years, but they had been thrust as fish from water to face the changing of time.

Ferenginar had lost its innocence in a sense, but which direction they would take frightened Quark and almost resurfaced his old desires to wrap himself up in a parcel of latinum— in a safe that kept him safe from the universe and its wars, its rage, its hatred, its torture, its relentless strife… but that was why he could no longer be part of it now that he had faced the truth. How could he profit from those suffering around him when he understood it. Now he was one of them in the fight over basically good and evil— a thing he had always resisted and at once time scoffed. Material profit was a crutch to save people from this battle— a battle of nothing less than souls of people as the main currency.

Humans tried to hide behind bettering themselves in a physical sense and the control of land and what was written in schoolbooks for children. Vulcans tried to hide behind a sense of basically senseless logic. Klingons tried to hide behind blind honor and blind rituals, and Ferengi had ever tried to hide behind a layer of liquid latinum to cushion themselves when they fell. But it was all the same thing. Power. And all of the universe was a struggle for it that was never-ending.

Zek, may not be a god in physical flesh, but he was a good businessman, and he knew what he was talking about far more than Quark ever did.

He bowed his head in full toady-fashion in reverence of his power of thought, shielding his face from the bright flashing light of his worldly wisdom.

"I'm grateful and hear you, O former Nagus."

Zek chuckled. "No one grovels like you, Quark. Never one to grovel with more passion. That's why I always liked you. Incidentally, though an ob-lappet isn't becoming on you. For future reference."

"Thank you. I… think."

"And now with all that wisdom floating your head away like swamp gas, you can rest safely this evening with your lady friend with whom I know you'd rather eat a meal with than an ugly old man."

Quark did not even bother asking how he guessed. He was exhausted from this conversation already. But thankfully Zek was finished speaking of serious matters.

Zek went on idly about his spa again and some weirdness about the Risans or other. Quark listened attentively, and did not interrupt much again as he slowly finished his beans and grubs.

Note: *geeiska/geeizka literally means "female person" or "sentient female" just as geeilak literally means "male person" or "sentient male". "ska" was for many years used more as a term of endearment for young girls; though it grew to having a derogatory meaning eventually, so in the translation of Ferengi calling women "females" it is not quite as conscious of thing as it would be to purposely use the term "female" instead of "woman" would be in English.

Also a side note, Ishka's name basically means "girl" as in a lovely or girly woman.