JMJ

Chapter Twenty-Five

Bonding

Ilgaina was a tad gangly in the limbs, but otherwise quite lovely and very young, especially for someone as talented as she was. Whether her lobes being somewhat larger than most female Ferengi had anything to do with it, they certainly gave her face a fuller and more understanding look. In fact, they made her look much older just as her experiences made her sound aged. As she gazed steadily at Traymak, Traymak felt he had known DaiMon with less happening in his sound than in the sound of this girl.

He sneered toothily as she opened the parcel and saw the gift inside.

A little Tarahongian choker necklace with a shiny rainbow orb hanging at the end. Inexpensive but deeply cultural to the people of Tarahong, it was seen a token of respect, wisdom, and of unifying.

A bribe? A message? A token of goodwill? Of understanding?

Oh, Ilgaina knew it was far more than that, especially since the people of Tarahong also considered chokers, or throat lacers, as a symbol of keeping one's secrets in one's throat for both men and women, and this choker was indeed the same ebony color of the same Taragong leather used for this symbolism— most Ferengi adapted it to look more feminine to sell out of the Alliance as accessories.

"Migoosh," mouthed Traymak.

Slowly Ilgaina nodded.

This whole scene was conducted in a private booth meant for love affairs. There was no affair more of interest to Traymak as this and it had nothing to do with her body and all to do with her mind.

"How did I reveal it?" asked Ilgaina, or rather Migoosh.

"Because of how you sounded when you discovered the truth about me. You beat me to it, and I'm humbled. But as you knew, you betrayed your relief," said Traymak as he patted his chest where the cup sealed his captive Keeoopii. "In my marauding years, listening for relief I find is so much more beneficial than listening for fear or pride. Relief reveals the inner-most workings of people under any sort of pressure."

He spoke with fake passion for those who may be overhearing, although he longed to know how Ilgaina, or rather Migoosh, had accomplished the feat of fooling the Keeoopii into thinking she was infected as much as he had. He would not press in case of prying ears. Nor would she ask how Traymak knew the name of Meegs' wife. Someday there may be time for that, but that time was not now.

"Oh, Traymak!" swooned Migoosh as though flattered beyond words as an innocent and foolish girl.

"What is it in your heart that propels you most?" crooned Traymak.

Migoosh smiled so sadly and so sweetly with such a release of pain as though pouring water long withheld in arms too tired to carry a jug anymore, but she did not cry.

"The goddess."

"That is what I thought. Ah, my goddess," Traymak said between puckered lips and making a sound like kissing though he never touched her face with his.

"But she is my own blood pumped from my own heart," Migoosh barely breathed as she leaned in close to his breath on her own. "And how this bond was taken from me. Marred and mutilated in mind and heart. It scares me to think what they plan, but not as much as how it fills me with resolve more than I thought myself capable."

"She is the ship of your deepest passions."

"Could we not mend that rent in hearts and minds together, my love?"

"I would like nothing better than this merge with all my longing heart," Traymak assured her with a ridiculously passionate moan as he placed the choker around her neck between the myriad lines of earlace chain hanging from ear to ear.

Reaching out her long spindly little arms, Migoosh hugged him with all her might. Not as a lover, but as a daughter. It was a feeling that surprised Traymak in a way that he had not expected. The love and respect was mutual.

He hugged the child back, and their partnership began. He found this bond holy as he had found that fear of the Keeoopii he had felt when making this decision himself to hide in plain sight in the invaders' wake instead of giving in to their domination or running away to some dark corner of the universe where Ferenginar could not touch him. It was the fear of losing all he had ever care for despite the coldness he had always shone from his own freely beating heart of home and hearth to the latinum sought in dreams beyond the stars on a rare clear Ferenginar night.

This holy fear was nothing like the cowardly fear of those crew-boys he had ordered about with contempt and caution of their own inanity upon old and now forgotten D'kora; though they were bound to him for opportunity and latinum beyond the dreams of bayou children. But his holy fear was now bonded to that of another with passion the burned more brightly than any sort of lust. It was the passion of that latinum according to Rule of Acquisition Number 229: Latinum lasts longer than lust. How true this latinum, pressed in nerve.

#

Traymak nodded gravely to himself as he reached the bridge. He hoped Migoosh had strength left to trust that he still had things under control on his end; though as her unorthodox partner himself, he had to trust that she would too.

#

How they got on the subject Quark did not much care, but he was amused. It felt like ages since he had been so pleasantly amused, especially amusement without irony. It was almost weird. He leaned in mock confidentiality over the table at breakfast in what might be called morning of their third day. His eyes fixed steadily on Sharzee as he would anyone he had a mind to roast, but all he said was: "You were a fan of Marauder Mo?"

The younger Ferengi Bennar and Nog did not share the surprise, and somehow that made it more amusing.

"Yes," said Sharlezeed smiling brightly. "My father bought me Saza. I always thought she was the best for Mo. I almost wanted to be a Kaitian myself for a while being able to wear clothes in public and run around with Mo in space. It was one of the series written by Geel and he was always the best writer in my opinion."

"That's weird," said Quark leaning back casually into his chair. "That was my favorite series too; though I'll admit I didn't think much of Saza at the time."

"Spunky, high-spirited, but sweet at heart for a Kaitian smuggler…not your type I suppose," teased Sharzee, "and Mo really did show his gentler side when she was around." She laughed. "I always loved how she talked him into saving those children in the Romulan slave market for not even a profit."

"Sacrilege, I know. I hated it. He regretted it later too," said Quark grinning.

"He would have regretted it either way."

"Gree-pad or Kroka-bed," said Quark shaking his head.

"I was convinced Geel was a Hidden Profiter," laughed Sharzee. "But he wasn't apparently."

"So Geel was secretly saying things against the hypocrisy of the Alliance?" asked Nog.

"My cousin talked about Geel," said Bennar. "I never saw Mo, but after Geel was fired he made some independent work with his own line of toys that I saw that I always liked."

"Oh, I should get into some of those," said Sharzee. "I meant to before I got sidetracked by politics and never got back once I scrambled out of that trap."

"I didn't think stories based off a marketing scheme for selling toys could have anything deep about them," admitted Nog. "Not like an ancient tale or a myth that stands the test of time."

"Creativity flourishes where it can," remarked Sharzee.

"Living off of Ferenginar since a young age, it makes sense," said Quark idly. "Besides, it's a generation thing. They were getting pretty boring from what I know about it by the time you were around."

"All art is selling something," remarked Bennar, rather quietly and a touch behind his timing since Quark had interrupted his inclusion accidently.

Quark laughed and gave him a hearty slap on the back.

"Now that!" he said with full seriousness and a dangerous smile, and he turned to Nog and Sharzee wryly. "That is wisdom…"

He put his glass to his lips and took a sip before pouring more pomatairi ale into Bennar's glass as a show of congratulations.

As Bennar sheepishly took it with a yellow-burning smile, Quark returned to Sharzee with a slight cock of his head.

"Why didn't you tell me you watched it too?" He guessed the answer, but that did not stop him from asking. "You knew I was a fan."

Sharzee turned to him knowingly, her earlaces tinkling.

"I thought you would've just figured I did when I knew who the Klingon Grashrark was who tried to hunt Mo down in Eelork's main arch, or the fact that I knew who Eelork was."

Okay, not what he expected, honestly. He stared a moment at her rather blankly.

"You mostly talked about Eelork's series," said Sharzee nodding the topic away.

That question, despite its honesty, would have only dragged them into politics, and she and he both knew only too well that the subject of gender roles was only politics now. It was a sad reality, and one that no one there wished to be so. How familiar and happy they all were now without it.

It was true what people said. Even when that was not his goal, Quark could make an argument over just about anything. It may have stemmed from innocent interest in people, but how often it somehow got that sensitive part of him going, and as he took another sip from his ale he could not help but think that Sharzee was his Saza, after all, and far more than he had ever been Grilka's Kahless.

"They had the best ships," he shrugged to Sharzee then, "and how could a lobeling not love the examples of Mo's power to outwit Klingons and Hew-mons and everyone else he ran into…"

"But you just told me Geel was your favorite," Sharzee teased.

Quark shrugged. "He is ultimately."

She was laughing from ear to ear with her grin without actually laughing. He had recalled by now that this was how the conversation had started. Sharzee had been comparing something in their mission to something from Marauder Mo, who although was always a marauder by name, in some series he was secretly a hero while still making his profits. Geel may not have been a Hidden Profiter, but he was certainly one of those people who had indirectly pointed Quark's heart and mind in that direction without his knowing.

"So we're the anti-hero from any planet's perspective, you're saying," teased Quark, "but a revealer of the soul of all sentient beings none-the-less. Do you consider yourself a Saza?"

Sharzee smiled. "I do."

The others laughed.

"Well, Uncle Quark's a Mo for sure," said Nog, scrunching his nose.

"Aren't you too, though?" asked Sharzee. "You're a hero now? I'm sure you have lots of Starfleet adventures where you're both a Ferengi and a representative of the Federation. I'm sure that's very challenging at times."

Nog shrugged. "It can be."

"Well, go and tell your aunt and Bennar one of your adventures then," encouraged Quark.

"I don't really consider them adventures," Nog said simply. "It's all very serious, Uncle Quark. It's not a game. That's what I learned being in Starfleet. Life is not a game."

"I never said it was," said Quark honestly. "Life is very serious, but it is that seriousness that makes it too serious to act serious about."

Nog sighed. "And there's that contradicting Hidden Profiter talk again. I think you became one just as an excuse to play word games."

"But there's nothing more serious than words," Sharzee commented.

"Exactly, take 'fefe' for example," Quark began.

Nog shrugged. "Yeah, it means 'anyone' in Human standard."

"But does it?" asked Quark.

Bennar who did not understand anything of Human or Federation Standard alike had not the slightest idea what Quark was talking about, and Sharzee knew very little as well so that she could only watch expectantly. Nog who knew Federation-Standard better than Quark, smiled.

"'Anyone' just means any person around," said Nog after a moment of thought.

"But 'fefe' means the same thing," said Quark.

"No, I actually explained it to Jake once. I told him it means the indefinite finite of any person that you don't know. An unknown customer or an unknown seller, and you don't know, because Ferengi is such a specific language and tries so hard to give number, place, and specifics, whereas most languages don't care about the indefinite and take them as just any new thing coming along the way. Ferengi takes the indefinite as always a profound potential. 'fefe' is making light of it in some ways or optimistically, because it is usually spoken with humor but it's also very solemn and serious about it at the—" Nog smirked and shook his head.

Quark laughed.

"Guarded optimism then?" suggest Sharzee with uncertainty herself.

Nog rolled his eyes, but he was smiling inside still.

"More like other people take for granted the unknown until they're faced with it, and then they don't know what to do. Being unspecific is normal and the specific is the profound," said Quark still with full good humor. "But Ferengi keep the unknown profound so that when they face it they can face it as it is, something to be feared but that fear is also excitement that can be used, and you face it head on to overcome it for your benefit."

"And some people take that as cowardliness, I understand," said Sharzee.

"I didn't know that other languages were that less specific than Ferengi," said Bennar. "How do they know what they're talking about if they aren't specific? Because they don't use money? I mean, what if you promised to give two people the same amount of something, but because there isn't anything specific except that both get the same amount how will you know for sure if they do, or do they just accept that they won't get exactly the same amount and take it like chance?"

Quark only laughed again. "If it was that unspecific you wouldn't know how many people you were doling out to."

"Right," admitted Bennar.

"And I've never come across a race that did not care about specifics when it comes to getting something," said Quark. "In fact, in my experience, usually the more they say they don't care, the more they do. They can call it 'equality' even if they don't take everything specific on individual basis, but then that's how they can get away with not being equal equally."

"That doesn't make any sense at all," Bennar said frowning.

"Oh, that's just my uncle criticizing people again and calling it wit," remarked Nog carelessly.

"Not my intention, Nog," said Quark.

"Have it your way," teased Nog.

"No, if I'm criticizing, it's a bad habit," sneered Quark. "I'm glad we're all together, and, at the risk of sounding too sentimental for the dry, mean wit of 'Quark' with all its distinguished poor taste, I'm going to go far enough to say that I hope we can do this more often again soon. Y'know when death isn't hanging over our heads." He held up his glass. "I propose a toast to the unity of our family. The family of Keldar!" He felt a swell with that name that was his sorrow and pride and everything in between with honor no less so than a Klingon warrior to his clan. "Broken as his family may seem, I don't believe it's so much broken as bent out of shape, and I hope that after all this we can unbend it and be a family again— with… Bennar an honorary asset, if he wants to be."

Bennar nodded gently. "I'll toast to that. I hope the best for the Keldar family."

"For the straightening up of the Keldar family of whom I am now proud to be a member," said Sharzee.

Nog smiled too. "To our family to sail smoothly along the River together, which in the end at least we all believe in. I'd like to be able to come home without anticipating another feud."

"May you come home to peace, nephew!" said Quark with a solemn bow that was still somewhat a tease.

The glasses clanked together and the Ferengi drank the rest of their drinks.

Or they would have.

Quark nearly choked at the last gulp with the sound of the cooing alarm.

"What's that for?" demanded Bennar.

"Someone's coming within range of the Star Seeker," said Nog scrambling out of his chair with a bump of everything upon the table, and he flew for the bridge.

Quark and the others followed.

#

Pel shifted, but as Julian Bashir turned he was not looking at her. She seemed about to wake up but his eyes fell upon the biobed. Her breathing became more conscious, but Bashir's mind was closing off from her. His senses dissipated, but they were suddenly renewed in strength somewhere else— somewhere detached from everything in the present and everything that was himself.

It had been over a year since he had last seen a flash from time and space, but he could tell from the beginning of it that it was going to be intense. Without much reason to fight it now, he willingly accepted it.

Just don't be too long for Pel's sake, he thought before his own sense of self diminished.

#

Warmth was the first sensation. Then there was a low intense sound like a great fan with a smidge of tilt so that its hum was up and down. The depth of it made it sound like something quite deep and quite rapid like a submarine vehicle in the benthic depths of some vast hot ocean. There was another sound too like a sucking of air and out it blew again. And although he knew they could be in no sea, but a rather compact space, the moisture was thick and full. Orange beams of light as from a tropical dream poured in faintly and glinted upon all in a dim and ethereal way so that it became yellow like molten gold… or more like latinum.

He was not alone; though he had already guessed before he looked where he was despite the unusualness of it. He was a doctor, he had better know. The only reason why it had taken him more than a few seconds to guess was the beating of the heart was not the natural beating of a Human heart. It was indeed the quick heartbeat of a Ferengi, quicker than usual; though his companion did not seem yet to notice.

Her latinum veins were still visible, especially on the sides of her bulbous skull that would have looked like a deformity in any preborn infant not of Ferengi origin. Split down the middle with three great lumps on either side of the head giving room for the enormous brain inside. She was huddled in a citrine cuddle within her mother's womb, and she was a beautiful, healthy creature. Perhaps a month to go.

But as the peaceful infant remained undisturbed, the sound of the mother's heart began to quicken more. It was no sprint across a stormy street that caused the mother's tension. It was something far more pressing. Hearing became acute to the muffled voices outside.

"No!" the cry was all-encompassing despite its distortion as it came from the mother herself.

Every muscle tightened and withdrew as though many different creatures all bent on fleeing the same pursuer.

The wave of trouble was enough to cause his companion to squirm. She opened her eyes, her hands gripped, and she lifted her heavy head. She knew something was the matter.

"You never said that she was part of this."

"We did and you agreed," hissed the voice outside.

Bashir did not recognize it. At least he did not think so.

"No!" said the mother again. "I won't!"

Motion began. She grunted and wrenched. Was the mother being forced somewhere out of her control? His companion squirmed and kicked in protest once, but the violence was too much for her and she settled down again. Despite her eyes squeezed shut, the distinctness of an expression of such distress might have matched Bashir's. If he really had an expression at all in this the strangest of his flashes.

Suddenly the motion stopped, or at least it was no longer a forward motion. They were still moving and the mother was being sat down, half lying down against her will now.

She screamed and his companion again recoiled, but there was a distinct sound again, however muffled of a sedater. She was out like a light. The infant relaxed after a moment or two, but she was not entirely sure.

As the mother's heart slowed and her breathing became regulated instead of being enough to cause an earthquake, the people outside could be heard more easily.

"Her lesser side overcame the Keeoopii."

"A weakness of motherly instinct," retorted the other.

Neither voice was familiar, but the first who spoke seemed under the second, despite the second being far younger.

"Weakness?" offered the first gently, "Or resilience?"

"The weakness of creatures such as Ferengi who cannot overcome their base instincts without help, and that's why we're here, to begin a new merge. You do have everything ready for my daughter, don't you, Doctor?"

"What will you do with Migoosh when she wakes up?"

"She's been merged far too long to be that resilient about it after it's not a direct threat to the infant. Her Keeoopii partner will soothe her into thinking that it never happened even if ever a dark dream until it is too late."

"I have everything ready. The youngest larva capable of merging."

"Good."

"Small enough to be injected into the womb without harm to the mother so that nothing will seem out of place."

"Well, go on then, unless you're having trouble with your own baser instincts."

"Hmph!"

"My daughter will be the catalyst for a beautiful new universe that will one day have even the great Federation on their knees before us."

Something was indeed injected and a little cruder than what would have been necessary in a better medical facility, but they had no access to the best facility at the moment. That seemed obvious enough. It was easily to guess what the dark shape coming inwards to his unsuspecting companion was, but it became clear enough visually too. He could hear a tricorder monitoring the progress.

The dark shape of a larva came to his companion's face. It inspected it with feelers, and made his companion lurch. It seemed to wonder about going into the mouth, but it changed its mind and headed straight for the ear canal. In it went. Bashir could see it slipping and sliding through the tunnel before it and into the living mind inside, pulsing with new and tender life. Veins golden and emerald like lines of treasure nestled in the veins of some living mine ready for the excavation.

At first it seemed that the infant knew there was some danger as her own little heart began to palpitate in fright, perhaps even in pain. She trembled as the larva greedily latched onto the orange brilliance before it. It slithered and oozed with perhaps what might be called childish delight as for some rare treat. It spread itself out greedily with tentacles into every crevice until it had stretched its furthest. Then just as with the mother, the infant's heart slowed to a normal rate, and all was quiet and peaceful with repose of mother and infant.

"Everything is successful, Meegs," said the Doctor almost too quietly to hear.

"My daughter," cooed the strong, young voice outside with a tremble that spoke of some deep and passionate mania, "my goddess… I worship you, and so will all who look upon you one day."