Chapter Ten
Expiration Date
Belongo had never been one to count days. In fact he had promised himself never to count while in this cell specifically, but every pace was counted now.
These four walls had been home for over five years. As the expiration date drew nearer, his anxiousness that he promised himself he would never have became something uncontrollable. If he was not pacing, he was fidgeting. If he was not fidgeting he gnawing his nails. He would have marked the walls had the walls been damageable enough to mark from side to side— not counting days but hours.
Four dry walls. Four cold lights in each corner like the lights of a freezer holding frozen starred-fish like his wise family always did instead of buying fish for jacked-up prices the day before Arka. Four exposed corners where even a finger flick could be seen by anyone looking in through the force-field barrier. Even with his back turned to the hall outside, no movement could be made without being completely under surveillance if someone happened to be looking. Four slits of vent on one side that one could only crawl through in one's wildest dreams shrunken by some non-existent ray to scurry about it like a rat in the walls. That four cornered cot. That four cornered screen through which wardens could speak and a good-behaving prisoner could search (limitedly). That four-sided mini-replicator from which small meals could be dished out no more than four times a day.
His days were not solely confined to this cell. He was put to work, which served as a relief far more than a burden. He would have been insane without it. He was allowed to walk about at certain times. Not that there was anywhere to walk to except a small greenhouse "park" in the middle of the station for psychological balance or whatever.
Humans and their psychological uplifting never made sense to him. He would rather look out a window at the free twinkling stars than at the winding foreign greenery just as caged as he was. Not like the stars which were where they were supposed to be.
How many times he had stared out at them or even imagined them and how they were where he was supposed to be?
"The stars are made of latinum", never felt so truer than when one was literally denied them. How many times had Belongo felt the freedom of stars almost of more value than latinum? An unmarked ship floating through space, passing stars and worlds with a small crew— that was true freedom. Colors in space plumed like smog more beautiful than any exotic lily— lifeless beauty like that of a fine jewel and yet so full of life as though it had a hand stretched out from the Great River itself, beckoning with spiritual guidance. It dared one to come after it and challenge destiny. Though, naturally it was usually latinum that could buy one's way to that freedom.
He knew that even had he been housed in Ferenginar's Rog Prison, he would not have been able to bribe his way out of it easily, so it was just as well to be in a foreign one. He would be just as cut off. Just as confined in a way so unnatural to a sentient soul. Instead of a fake garden, there would be holo-games (or hollow games) that the inmates would play. There was the natural gamble of the game itself, the gamble of whether or not the warden would notice, the gamble of whether the bribing of the warden or guard would be enough to make him look away or play too, the gambling of ever truly getting to use the reward money if you could never gain enough to bribe one's way out of the prison. At least "good-behavior" was a simpler gamble and it cost less and gained more here in this Federation Prison.
He sighed as his mind wondered back to stars.
…So is it that the stars are made of latinum or that latinum is made of stars? He thought in a dizzying sort of way. The more latinum, the more stars, and the more stars the more latinum in an endless cycle to truer and truer freedom?
He sighed again.
But selling stars and bridges to people who did not understand the art of Ferengi commerce apparently had not been a risk worth its price for him. He had no money to bail himself out even though Federation Space did not honor such thing as Ferengi bribery. Using the name of his uncle to make himself look important meant nothing to anyone, least of all Ferengi, when that same uncle found him not worth getting out of the prison.
Listening to his cousin's advice on how to con people into thinking he could sell them location points where they could harness psionic energy better than he was already doing… well as Rule Number 59 stated "Free advice is seldom cheap." By the time he knew Krax had not been so interested in a partnership as he had been in tricking Belongo, it was far too late to convince anyone of his innocence. The Grand Nagus was right to leave Belongo to his own stupidity.
He scuffed his shoe against the squeaky floor, and he muttered, "About due for a wash."
About three minutes, he supposed.
Funny how even a scuff on the floor seemed like something satisfying to kick.
He recalled with some humor despite himself how he had tricked some young and silly fool that the rocks down on the south side on the mountain before them collected energy enough that it could even be rubbed down on your skin like soap.
#
"Don't you know your history about how Dr. Elizabeth Dehner did her studies here for Starfleet? I have on my PADD here documents scanned that prove she discovered it, and how the secret was supposed to be hidden."
"So you've used it yourself?"
"I know that the last thing you scanned on the planet was a pincher fly with unusual wings."
How he knew this was because his PADD was not really a PADD but a device that stole information from other devices within certain proximities.
"Really? What color?"
"Green with flecked violet and flaming orange wings."
#
What had he needed Krax for when he had been doing so well he had been about to make his own soap out in Federation Space and into Freecloud setting up shop for people to buy psionic energy?
Oh, it had been brilliant!
He already had had a small staff hired to help him pull it off. Non-Ferengi helped, including a beautiful and very persuasive young Adorian female. She had gotten her way out of being incarcerated; she had been so clever, unlike anyone else in the business aside from Krax himself.
But Krax had not been after profit. He had been after titles. Honestly, Belongo hardly considered that Krax would not be inheriting the title of Grand Nagus, and Belongo had hardly considered himself harmed by the idea. If he had been made First Clerk that would have surprised him, but apparently Krax had been threatened. Why?
Well, in those early days of prison after he knew that lies, promises, and bribes were out of the question to secure his freedom, he had to resign himself to the fact that he was indeed a prisoner in a foreign space. After the screams and roars of rage Belongo had released of which he could almost still hear the echoes ringing in his ears within these four miserably sterile walls, Belongo had determined to discover why.
He sat down on his cot now as the self cleaning service slipped out from the wall, and yes, there they were, four little slipping things gliding back and forth along the floor making it gleam so strongly that Belongo could see his face in it.
It was a very different face from the one that had stared back at him only a few short years ago the first time the floor had been cleaned to gleaming.
It was no mirror, of course, but it was strong enough to see one's features when one had nothing else to look at.
That look of haggard rage that had overtaken him in those early days— that look of wild insanity that might have had him sent to Elba II in some more ambitious period of the Federation to eliminate madness— that monstrous expression had disappeared. It had smoothed down like scuffed sand at the bottom of a river that had settled into place again.
Long ago had it settled to a determination that left him deciding that being marooned from the River of the Great Material Continuum could be used to some profitable end. Idleness was never profitable. As stated in Rule Number 223, "Success is found in motion." And whether that motion be physical or mental, it must always move with the flow of that Continuum. He would learn why Krax had found him a threat and use it against him… not in revenge. Though, it was not as if he had anything to lose so that it basically nullified Rule Number 88, but simply to take what might have been his success more than tricking idiots into thinking they could gain psychic abilities by rubbing minerals against the back of one's skull to seep psionic energy through the amygdale.
He had done his research well for that. He could do his research for this, and if there was one thing Belongo prided himself in it was his devotion to Rule Number 74 "knowledge equals profit." No longer as an amateur but as a true devotee like an alien monk in some animal den separated from the flow of man to meditate in peace.
Now that time of meditation and learning had made him a mollusk in his shell. He almost regretted it as he stared at that face in the floor. It was the face of a child unwilling to leave his mother's arms when the time had come to seek fortunes from a river of stars instead of leeches from the river in the backyard. Was it madness to say now that he feared to leave this cell?
Maybe he was needed at Elba after all.
A Ferengi afraid to earn his rightful profit?
Good behavior and even gentle considerateness had left the stone-faced staff impressed. After all, they all had originally seen him as a typical under-evolved person that they believed with near religious fervor all Ferengi to be. Good behavior had shortened his sentence, anyway, no matter what they thought of him on the evolutionary scale. Now that expiration date was coming upon him, he felt less than anything on the sentient scale of inferiority. He felt like a can of lokar beans on Tarahong shelf-dated before its time.
Despite Ferengi belief that "Satisfaction is not guaranteed", Tarahong had always been given their expiration dates as they requested from the Alliance. Most Ferengi were pleased to sell those cans dated within in a few short months as they knew that every sanitary Tarahongian would throw a can away the day of expiration without thinking that it could last longer than ten years. Then they would buy more beans tomorrow. Belongo felt a guilt for that more than he ever might have guessed he could have before his incarceration for the waste of so much beans, but why he should compare his day of freedom to being incinerated in a trash receptacle on Tarahong frightened him more than the prospect, and the prospect frightened him quite enough as stated.
No matter how sick he was of replicated beans for breakfast every morning in its slop of breakfast broth, he could not help the terror from growing that he did not believe himself capable of acquiring his hard-earned profit in anything more than theory. Was it because he felt safe here? Was it because he feared responsibility? He could not tell for certain, but he shivered at that face in the floor and leaned back against the wall so that he blocked the vision of it. He stared out at the four sided doorway that made the negative space.
It looked, of course, just as if one could step right through the wide and open doorway as easily as a ship from a docking bay, but he was sure that even had he not been Ferengi, he would have grown quite acute to the sound of the humming barrier— more real than any sight.
Four more days until his freedom.
He moaned.
He was going back to bed.
Closing his eyes tightly, he felt the lights grow dim again from his lack of movement. He relaxed his tense muscles in the less penetrating light.
How much more penetrating, though would the lights of the Tower of Commerce feel like?
It would be a search light to watch for anything amiss instead of a lighthouse to guide people safely to shore. The ears of the Tower could penetrate all living flesh. And those ears were not those of the Nagus or the Nagus' men. The Shadow Nagus was nothing to those ears that had no form of their own. Those ears heard all secrets but never repeated them. A mutant creature was being molded into something powerful that would devoir the Shadow Nagus' power too, though, and the remnants of all that remained. It would be an even blacker shadow of the shadows.
How conducting business from the shackles of a prison could be better than business from the streetwise corners of Stardust City! How innocent he would have remained had he simply gone to Freecloud as he had originally planned. Now he knew too much.
Perhaps it had become too much even for his cousin. He could not help but feel in his heart where in that same place he had felt so much hatred not so very long ago now only held pity. He shivered. Could the same greed, that same un-Ferengi greed have ensnared him also had he not been incarcerated? He almost could not help but thank Krax. Had he acquired psionic energy he would have sent his message to him mentally, not only as a thank you, but maybe as a pleading for Krax's own sanity.
Loud snores emitted, and they happened to come from him. They almost woke him up, but he was very soon too sound asleep to care.
#
Slowly, Rom's eyelids fluttered. First they resisted like an insect unsure of the early morning light's strength. They tested it like a pair of wings. First once. Then twice. Then after a mumbling, whispering pause from the lips below and a clacking of the tongue on the roof of the mouth, the eyelids finally opened. Hazy eyes emerged tinged at the edges in still a somewhat sickly green, but the irises were bright and alive with the light of a pair of smoky blue planets behind the conscious strength of onyx pupils.
Ishka sighed overjoyed as his insides too began to sound with sentient consciousness, pausing and shifting with the shifting of his eyes and thoughts.
"Moogee?" he asked in much the same tone as the first time he woke up to her touching his head with the back of her fingers.
Leeta simply lunged at him, causing him to jump slightly with a start. She moved so fast that neither Dr. Tal nor Dr. Bashir could stop her, but despite Rom's little squeak, he seemed just fine as he embraced her tightly back.
"He should be alright," said Dr. Bashir sighing with relief. "The infusion should hold for a while."
Tal motioned Leeta out of the way with wide sweeps of his hand so that he could double-check her husband's life-readings on his tricorder.
"Infusion?" asked Rom dropping his hands unhappily into his lap like a sad little boy. "It's not over?"
"No, Nagus," said Tal with a short but polite bow; then he motioned him to lie flat. "Your body is obviously taking this all well, considering, but the pyrocyte will fade away again and you'll have to be resupplied until a permanent cure can be had."
"Oh…"
After his scan, Tal nodded with satisfaction, tucking away his tricorder as one might take up a weapon that had just fired and he an expert marksman.
Rom thought a moment. "Do I still need to be careful about… being too excited like a person with high blood pressure?"
"You should be normal until the pyrocyte runs dry, Nagus, which at the rate it's going, according to the readings before you woke up," said Dr. Tal, "should be about forty-eight hours, which of course means…"
"That this happened two days before we noticed anything wrong with you," gasped Leeta turning to Rom.
Rom blinked in surprise himself, and he sat bolt upright to leap from the mat, barefooted and loosely clad in undershirt and pants; Ferengi did not have pajamas.
"How!?"
"Rom," said Ishka sternly as she held him by the shoulder, and shook her head. "I know the doctor says you should be alright, but don't get yourself worked up regardless."
Rom dropped his head between his stooping shoulders. "Yes, Moogee."
"What about some of the natural remedies?" Ishka then demanded.
As Rom sat back down upon the edge of the examination cot, he leaned into her side. She put her arm tightly around him, and she kissed him.
"I don't believe in natural remedies for being anything more than prolonging the inevitable," remarked Tal.
"There are remedies that have proven themselves very successful," retorted Ishka with a sniff. "And I know one in particular that is known for putting fire in the blood— meaning pyrocyte, and my grandfather used to take it when his blood was going thin with much success, and that was according to his doctor's prescription."
"And he lived to be 124 years old, right?" agreed Rom. "The same number as the code to his safe minus the letters…"
Bashir smiled despite himself. He was not sure why. It was not exactly amusement; though he felt a tinge of the elation of laughter in the back of his mind that did not surface enough to affect him more than that smile. He shook his head. Something about Rom's simple awe of something as important to a Ferengi as a safe being so ironically part of his long-lived marker might have almost made it sound as though Rom was going back into believing in the Great Material Continuum. Though, Bashir felt despite Rom's claim of being more of a 'realist' these days, he was really simply an admirer of all that sounded profound.
But Bashir said nothing, of course. Not about Rom's great grandfather or about the swamp blood broth that Ishka was talking about and certainly not anything against the doctor's opinion of the whole matter altogether. Besides, his mind was wandering a bit, and he let it, to the idea that this attack upon the Grand Nagus had been done to him before the arrival of the Pelipan representatives— before the arrival of Meegs even, and it had already been on most people's minds that Meegs might have been responsible if not another crony of Krax's. Meegs was being sought for arrest as they spoke.
"Zek and I have it twice a week and no more for the pure fact that if you have too much you'll have too much pyrocyte and it can affect the equilibrium," Ishka was arguing.
"Go down to once a week," said Tal.
"Excuse me?" Ishka demanded.
"Look," said Leeta kindly. "Maybe we should all just be calm now."
But just as she spoke Rom did the very opposite of that. He jumped up a second time more violently than before, and had the fusion of pyrocyte been any less successful it would have been a crash to his system like any computer overheating, but as it was, he did not even sway from a head fuzzing from a bout of dizziness from getting up too quickly. True to the quick synapses and quicker blood-flow of the Ferengi, he simply moved further and turning to Bashir in a wide swing of motion he stared at the doctor as if he had the answers to all the problems of life itself.
"Where's Quark?" he asked.
"He's Acting Nagus," said Bashir.
"But he's doing alright, right?" asked Rom. "Can I go help him now? Isn't anyone with him?"
"Last time I saw him," said Ishka kindly, "Zek was with him."
"And he's guarded and he knows what all the plans are. He's acting in accordance with your will and… I don't understand,' said Leeta.
"And, no, sir," said Tal. "You can't go work as Nagus right now. It's absolutely out of the question. If anything should go wrong in your condition, I won't be held responsible. You're to go to the Nagal Residence and not to reside in the Tower at all. With high guard and four Ferengi meals a day at a steady and healthy pace with plenty of rest and a gentle but steady pace of activity to keep your heart strong, which it is very strong, and we want to keep it that way."
"But we always live in the Tower more than in the residence," Rom complained. "It's always like I'm intruding in on some ancient palace when I go there. I'm afraid to touch anything."
"The lack of pyrocyte will start affecting your brain functions too before long so keep mentally but gently active as well and keep your ear canals as clean as a jeweler's pick. The risk of infection is too great with a weak amount of pyrocyte, and with your body working so hard on the rest of the situation, it could be more deadly than usual. I know you have a medical history of being especially sensitive to infection as it is."
Rom looked at Bashir once more pleadingly.
"I'm not going to argue with the prescription of your doctor," said Bashir.
"But who's going to be with Quark when we meet with Krax?"
"Excuse me, Nagus, I also request to be there to monitor you every step of the way," said Tal.
Rom blinked stupidly back him.
"With pay for extra hours, I suppose," said Ishka without irony.
"My fee is normally double for house calls but only up by twenty percent for emergency residential stays," retorted Tal.
Ishka turned to Leeta, "And you let Quark talk the Congress into lowering the taxes for healthcare benefits."
Leeta flushed bright red, and her eyes flashed in alarm. "Well, it's not as if he seduced— the taxes were— it was all done in— legally we—"
"I won't hear about taxes or Economic Advisers just like my doctor prescribes!" snapped Rom. "And the doctor can come if he feels he has to! And I'll go to the residence! But I want to talk with my First Clerk before we go or I'm not going anywhere, and I want my mother to talk with him too!"
And he crossed his arms stubbornly.
Ishka nodded calmly. "You heard the Nagus."
Tal gave a sharp bow yet again. "Nagus. Will you be needing anything else?"
"No," said Rom gloomily in stark contrast from his bold proclamation.
"Then I shall leave you to prepare for departure. I have other patients to attend to," said Tal. "Ishka. Leeta." He nodded silently to Dr. Bashir.
And Bashir nodded back with a slight Ferengi bow, which pleased Tal very much. A loud and miserable sigh escaped Rom, but he did not speak until the door had sealed shut behind the Ferengi doctor.