JMJ

Chapter Twelve

Chain Links

"Rom," said Dr. Bashir after a moment of silence.

It was a small room afforded him through Starfleet converting energy to latinum as they usually did when dealing with Ferengi or other races with currency. Most of what was in here out of storage was related to the Keeoopii investigation. Even at the moment there was a deceased parasite still being preserved well enough to study in a containment pod.

The work-desk was low and shaped a little like a curving tadpole with a swivel chair in semi-circle on one side. On the other side a two stools were situated. A very small space was given to an examination table big enough for a Ferengi to sit and lie upon if need be and the shelving was the pull type, that could be taking up from the floor by automated systems, which would pop up either by voice command or reaching down to touch a button beneath a hinge in the floor tiles. There were a few scattered screens. A round window looked out into the dull stormy afternoon, but as they entered Bashir commanded the computer to full the vision of it.

Rom was just about to lie down on the examination table.

"You can sit down if you like," said Bashir motioning to the swivel chair behind the desk.

"No. You sit there," Rom said, "I'm tired of being treated better than everyone else. Besides, aren't you going to examine me?"

Bashir shrugged and put his hands together. "I don't need to. I already know what your ailment is and how it started, and I just have to say, I'm sorry."

Rom stared hard at him, unmoved and almost afraid with eyes wide and mouth ajar as he studied the doctor and made his own diagnosis. Bashir allowed the scan, but even after Rom was done he did not move more than a slow blink of his eyes and the slightest release of his withheld breath.

"What do you have to be sorry about?" asked Rom. "Or do you just mean you feel sorry for me."

Slowly his eyes withdrew and his ears likewise as he became absorbed in his own thoughts again.

"I know I shouldn't've said what I said to everyone," said Rom. "I'm the one who should be sorry, anyway."

"But you did and you meant it," asked Bashir.

"I… didn't really mean it."

"That you think your people under-evolved?"

"Well. At least. In a way we are," said Rom. "According to all the things I've read, anyone who has not evolved beyond greed, beyond the need to acquire things, beyond strife, beyond hate, and beyond squabbling is under-evolved, and the Ferengi… well, I'm not denying our abilities or our mental capacity, but we are and have already been decided to be under-evolved. No one even takes us seriously we're so culturally backwards… no reserve of any kind… and…"

"No reserve?"

"No self-dignity then."

"No self-dignity? Or a different sense of what that word means."

"I know, but— I don't understand why you've been like this lately, Dr. Bashir, defending us so much. I thank you for everything you've done for my brother and— and— and— well, the whole planet, but that's just it. You're so selfless. You Humans give up everything to help people."

"We were helped by your people too. There's Bennar and Noi for instance… your son… and you…"

"It's still more the other way around. You go beyond your baser instincts. You're so much better than us. All we have is buying our way into an afterlife that may not even exist and a holiday that celebrates by everyone buying presents for themselves." He fidgeted with his long nimble fingers. "Please don't tell Quark and Moogie that."

"I don't think there's anything more to add than what you've already told them."

"And I hurt them, I suppose," sighed Rom miserably.

"Rom," said Bashir showing him the swivel chair once more. "Please. Sit down, I insist."

With an exasperated sigh, Rom obeyed. Collapsing into it bodily and completely exhausted, he dropped his head into his arms as he flung them onto the tadpole desk.

"I thought we could change," said Rom, his muffled voice on the verge of sobs "I thought we could be like you, and now I see that we can't. We're not capable of it. Not yet, anyway. We're too under-evolved. They want it to be like it was before. Even the New Course people want it to be like it was before except with the females exploiting with the men and giving everyone in the crew an equal cut, but we're still going to exploit everyone else, and the equality thing is more out of fear or hatred and not love for each other!"

"There was something that a wise Ferengi once told me back before I wanted to listen."

Rom looked up at Bashir sulkily as he blinked at him from the darkness of his sleeve. "What's that? A rule of Acquisition forced to mean something nice?"

Bashir shook his head. "'Laws don't change hearts. Reforming is a personal choice.'"

"Well, yeah, because we're so under-evolved we need to change the laws to protect people from hearts that can't be changed."

"Like you're brother's?"

"Oh, I don't know!"

"Rom. If you really believe you're under-evolved and I'm speaking with a child incapable of growing up then there's no reason for me to be here at all, but if you think you're capable of having an intelligent, equal conversation with me…"

"But—"

"Promise me you will never call yourself 'under-evolved' again."

"I… promise," heaved Rom with difficulty. "But you know we are. I've read all the—"

"And they're wrong. Much of what you were reading is likely out of date anyway. We originally did believe that Ferengi were primitive in comparison to other races."

"'Species'?"

"'Races'. Because we did not understand you and compared you to ourselves at a different historical period that we deemed unworthy of our current beliefs which we consider as a race to be in a constant state of evolutionary advancement."

"But even if they don't say it specifically of Ferengi anymore, they still say—"

"It's much like all the 'great' rulers of our world who deemed every reign before theirs so inferior to their own reign that they eliminated all good things that happened in the past to further their point in the present. Pharaohs eliminated whole histories. A much later people tore down beautiful buildings that were strong and sound and put up cheap and plain ones just to make a point against the past. Humans do have a great fault and that is to think everything from the past is worthless when they come up with an idea that is new, and whether the new idea is good or bad the old ideas are seen as incongruous with the present."

"Well, I don't exactly know what a Pharaoh is even if I think Nog mentioned something about their treasures that they buried with them to buy their way into the afterlife in tombs more beautiful than the houses they lived in, but that's the past. We stayed stagnant for years and years. Millennia!"

Bashir shook his head. "You can't compare our culture to yours in terms of development. You invented warp drive by yourselves without any outside incentive unlike us, so there's development for you, and while we're speaking of First Contacts many Humans of today are treating people not in line with the thoughts of the Federation much the same way as some races treated us before we developed the Federation into a strong intergalactic entity. As weak, inferior, dangerous— or worse a joke and under-evolved. The Federation is borrowing alien concepts and merging them with their own to create, perhaps accidently, the same superiority complex that we wished to break down that was used against us, so are we really so evolved?"

Rom sighed. "I don't know anymore. I said I was sorry."

"And your race has done some good things, albeit not always for the most admirable reasons, but not everything the Federation does is done out of purity of heart, I can tell you that, but I don't need to, because you know that already."

"Power can always get to someone's head, I suppose, but I don't know what good we've done."

"You stopped the civil war on Hupyrian without bloodshed, and with terms that everyone could agree with long before your greed became overwhelming when you made First Contact with them. It was to trade with people that still had things to trade, of course, in part, since "Peace is good for business" was written before "war is good for business", but you did see the inner-fighting as something that had to be stopped, and you saw a way you could help that would benefit everyone, and you acted upon it. And on Clarus. Originally, you traded warp drives to them. You introduced it. You did not appear to them as gods or with philosophical superiority, but as people with mutual needs. 'Too of one and not enough of the other'. The warp drives helped the Clarusians be able to mine from their own moons and to develop a way to recycle materials on those moons where they would not be a danger to the resources and lives on their planet."

"We disobeyed the non-interference rule."

"That is just a theory too. You did not think of yourselves as superior to anyone because of their stage of scientific advancements. It has nothing to do with intelligence so much as incentive which technologies are strived for and which are not. All sentient people are people, and people with whom both you and they could prospectively benefit from by learning from each other. There was a time before the Universal Translator when you learned every language you came into contact with and encouraged the learning of yours to form better relationships, and thus the origins of Saleable Ferengi. There was a time when you brought about much good. A time that made the Alliance what it still is hanging onto now even in this time of disorder. Evolution has nothing to do with the cultural stages of a society, I've learned, and I'm glad to have learned it."

Rom sighed and thought about this a moment. "Well, even if that's true. There were still the evil classes, and the chains that separate everyone."

"Alright," said Bashir rubbing his temple wearily. "There's something I want to tell you about the philosophy of chains and the dark side of it."

Rom gulped. "There's a dark side?"

"Doesn't everything created by sentient beings have a dark side? Nothing is completely impervious, and this philosophy has a very, very tipsy side to it that has made some Humans of Earth leave their home planet never to return. Before that was possible it was the cause of some irreparable brutality— so much so that you probably would not even believe it."

"It… has a dark side?"

"Well, first you start off doing away with something that is obviously a problem such as the way women were treated on Ferenginar in the past few hundred years, especially, but you solve the problem not by treating it as an immoral act but as chain that has separated people in society that is an inevitable thing if the chain remains. It is seen as something that must be rooted out at all costs like a thorny vine choking the flowers in a flowerbed."

"And?"

"You remove it— violently if it isn't going fast enough any other way, but you feel free and happy for a little while afterwards and good about yourself full of pride about what you have done. But in the pride, in the greed for control people are still dissatisfied. And as you work day in and day out, you begin to think… there are still more chains, more thorns that must be rooted out. It is the rich against the poor. It is not seen as an immoral act of the rich people not caring about the poor or even downright despising them in their belief that the poor are not working hard enough to be as rich as them or the poor resenting the rich to an unhealthy and dissatisfied degree of hatred. It is seen merely as a chain. Just something that can be rooted out and the problem will be solved. And so you remove this chain and everyone is paid the same no matter how much they work, and you feel good about yourself for a while, but then people realize they are still unhappy and still dissatisfied. Then you look around for a chain. It must be the minorities against the majorities. Ah, yes! That must be it. Not because of the immorality that some people hate the majorities because there are too many and can sway the trends too easily or the majorities fearing the minorities or believing they are superior somehow. It is seen simply as some act that is as inevitable as a paper burning in a fire. As long as that barrier between them exists, there will always be pain, so you remove the 'chains', you remove those thorns to stop the pain. There is no majority, there is no minority because everyone is made the same and everyone has no strong opinions about religion, politics, or censorship, and then everyone is happy, but they are not happy.

"Why are they unhappy? Well, they will come up with other barriers and other chains and other thorns that are seen as inevitably in the way, plowing into a future where there are no roses, because there are no thorns, but roses are always attached to thorns so we don't need roses. We don't need those larger flower-heads that we were originally trying to save from the thorns, because it might make the little wildflowers unhappy. We cannot have the little wildflowers because it might make the grass unhappy, and when all is grass then even the grass is done away with, because even some grass is greener and stronger than other grasses. At last when all is barren and all is the same everyone is unhappy equally, and at last you say, 'It must be me. I must be a chain to myself because there are no other chains to lose. My will is an illusion. I am trapped within the fate of things that cannot be changed. It is not because I am immoral, but because it is an inevitable thing that must be rooted out, but that would be destroying yourself, and how can one do that?

"And you may say that the people of Earth are content… perhaps they are, but if one thing went wrong on Earth and the rulers of Earth looked inwards at themselves instead of out at the stars that are made of a latinum in a Human sense then they would see that they have thrown everything away and that no one can help them and just like what happened when the Maquis lost their good lives, they would become violent animals without rational thought, because they are used to being taken care of and of everyone being treated the same. It is a more subtle way to oppress a people, more subtle than the Cardassian way, but it is a way that still destroys and is destroying onwards. It was not because it was inevitable that the Maquis would become violent just because they were not living peacefully, but because they believed it was inevitable."

"Rule of Acquisition Number 267: 'If you believe it, they believe,'" Rom muttered mistily.

"And Humans… despite the fact that many truly do want to better themselves, they are a part of a people who believe in a type of collective consciousness and that there is no morality but freeing people from 'the chain'. That is what drives them. Just as much as the Ferengi believe that the acquiring of goods is freedom, we believe that the breaking of chains is freedom. Both can destroy, but ours can destroy more completely because of the very fact that it is collective and not independent. If one falls we all fall, but if one of you fall than everyone else carries on. Not necessarily because you do not care, though many Ferengi have become so very cold in the latter centuries of the Alliance, but because one cannot destroy everyone just to make one person feel happy. Or give up one's child's bed for the use of a stranger. Or burn a house housing a few generations' worth of people for one person outside to feel warm for one day. No one has the right to take from someone else to give to someone else. That is just as selfish, though indeed far more hypocritical, than keeping one's own gains for oneself.

"I'm not defending now the way the Alliance had been conducting itself for profit with deceit and the carelessness it has often showed to those less fortunate, but I no longer believe that Humanity at this time has the answer… am I making any sense to you, Rom? There is no flawless solution to politics. It doesn't exist. The least you can do is to allow your people the freedom to choose for themselves their own destinies as individuals rather than a collective. Isn't that the duty of the Grand Nagus, under oath? Are you going to punish the good with the bad by restricting everyone's lives?"

Rom lowered his head.

There was a long silence.

"You still said…"

"But you said you were willing to start a cultural renewal," said Bashir.

"Well, Leeta… Leeta likes the idea of Hidden Profiters. I think it reminds her of the virtues of Bajor and the Prophets. She's so happy about it, but not everyone in the past was a Hidden Profiter. In fact, some people actually… killed Hidden Profiters before the civilized Alliance, but she keeps on with it, and sometimes I think she wants us all to be Hidden Profiters, and then I'm like, 'Leeta, you don't understand.' It's not like Bajoran beliefs, it's still about fighting your whole life for spiritual profit instead of physical profit to pay your way into a different version of the Divine Treasury… not about bettering yourself."

"I think to the Hidden Profiters, that is bettering yourself."

"But to most Ferengi, heartlessly tricking your family out of their money and running away with it is bettering yourself too," Rom pointed out.

Bashir sighed. "Do most Ferengi feel that way?"

Rom lowered his head. "I don't know. I just wish that there really was no religion at all."

"But you have one, Rom," Bashir shrugged. "Yours is the religion of chains."

Rom lifted bolted his head up so quickly that it might have given a Human a whiplash, especially with such a heavy head as a Ferengi's, but he was more alert than usual with his pale blue eyes reflecting the light-dome above them. He was rigid as he stared, though his teeth were not quite set, and he stared at Bashir. It was not a vacant listening stare. It was a stare that bore into Bashir's face with supreme intensity. Perhaps he learned it from Leeta, but it was the study of eyes just as Bashir was looking at his.

A pleasant chiming sound interrupted the intensity of the scene, and it sounded so out of place— that musical pixie-sound at the moment. Bashir thought he had gotten used to the Tower computer sounds that were meant to be soothing to a Ferengi's sense of hearing, but it was so incongruous at the moment, Rom groaned with annoyance himself. Though, he probably would have been annoyed by most anything Ferengi at this point.

It was so out of character for Rom, who was so much more inclined to love than to hate. Much like his brother, really. The Keldar sons were intense but only because they cared so passionately. They were so the same and so different that it was little wonder than they had the clash that they had; though it was Bashir's opinion that it was really more how they were separated by the strange manner in which Ishka raised her children as he had suggested just moments ago. Praising Quark for being an orthodox Ferengi but then loving Rom for being not one was not exactly so much to be blamed on the society itself, but because Ishka herself had been so conflicted. Bashir knew she still was, and she was the most intense in the family of all.

As Bashir checked his transmition screen, he knew he could not ignore the call to consider psychological imbalances, however.

"It's from Starfleet," Rom quietly stated.

Bashir nodded. "Yes, wait a minute, alright?"

But as Bashir answered the transmition, Rom was doing quite the opposite and was already at the door of the office.

It had been so long since he had seen a Human face that it was almost like going from a dark closet into a bright room only to find oneself having to adjust to see at all. He also had to admit to himself that perhaps he was not the best person to be arguing with Rom about being uncomfortable about one's own race, considering the fact that lately he felt some anxiety speaking with his own race. Certainly it was not hatred or disdain of any sort. In fact he felt he loved his race more than he ever had before, and yet to speak with his race made him break out in a cold sweat that he could not explain. It was easier to speak with the most pig-headed, cold-hearted, profit-obsessed Ferengi than to speak with a kindly and familiar Human. Perhaps in a physical sense it was the polar opposite of Rom's problem.

"Dr. Bashir."

"Captain Sisko."

"You look well," said Sisko with a squint that Bashir did not understand.

"Really?" laughed Bashir gently in disbelief. "I would have thought I would've looked pale and agitated."

"Are you ill, Doctor?" asked Sisko with suspicion.

Rom was pausing at the door to listen despite himself, standing motionless in the open doorway.

"No, just a lot stress given the situation; though the Grand Nagus is no longer in critical condition."

"That's… good news," said Sisko, and he paused staring at Bashir very hard.

"Is something wrong?" Bashir asked.

"I was under the impression that you were severely unwell," said Sisko.

"Then why would you call me at my office?"

"Because I was told you were in your office when I first called the Tower to ask how you were."

"But why would I be ill?" asked Bashir.

Sisko frowned. "It was suggested that Starfleet bring you aboard off of Ferenginar because of an assassination attempt on you."

Rom gasped.

"Is someone else there with you?" asked Sisko.

"The Grand Nagus."

The door shut behind Rom as he came bounding back up with clenched fists. "Who's trying to assassinate Dr. Bashir?"

"I suppose that's what we'd all like to know," said Bashir to Rom and back to Sisko he said, "Sir, did they say what was wrong with me? Wherever you received this information."

"That you were dying from your system being pumped with so much distilled pyrocyte that a Human without your genetic enhancements would be dead already from the shock of an anaphylactic reaction."

Gaping, Rom looked at Bashir as if for any signs of distorted flesh, and Bashir glanced with a furrowed frown back at Rom.

Rom swallowed hard. "They put my pyrocyte into Dr. Bashir?"