JMJ

Chapter Thirty-Nine

Parental Guidance

Rom paused thoughtfully considering this statement. It was an odd one coming from a Ferengi, but Quark was no ordinary Ferengi anymore. After a moment Rom smiled.

"Or gold either, I suppose," he piped in agreement; he paused a second time. "Or power… or glittering water, rain… or ice cubes! Or snow or sugar cookies… have you ever had those?"

"No."

"They were pretty but they sure made me sick afterwards," Rom admitted.

"It's all those grains that Humans eat," Quark shrugged. "It's hard to believe they digest it as a staple much less when they consume it under-fermented…"

"— or jewels or diamonds…" Rom went on suddenly in a manner that at first made Quark's eyes pop, but he soon lowered them wryly.

With a roll of his eyes that was more affectionate than truly annoyed, he waited patiently for Rom to end.

"—or glasses, or earlaces, or bolts or that little reflection off people's eyes in the light or—"

"Well, actually I think that last one is exactly what it is," Quark teased.

"What?" Rom blinked, mouth gaping.

"Well, isn't that an old saying of Humans too? 'Eyes are the windows to the soul?'"

"I don't think I ever heard that one. I never heard the first one."

"Sharzee found it. If that's the case then the window to the soul is the very beginning glint of what shimmers more than latinum."

"Us?" said Rom.

"Our souls, and that's what Nog wants."

"A soul at peace is worth more than vats of Latinum in the Treasury of the Dayitela?"

"Only I think it's more like going home."

"I thought 'Home is where the heart is,'" said Rom.

"In the stars made of Latinum," agreed Quark.

Rom looked at Quark a moment. Quark knew he weirded him out even now. He only smiled and shrugged. What else could he do?

"Say… uh… Brother?" asked Rom.

"Hmm?"

"Actually…" Rom looked away undecidedly rocking his head from one side to the other, but he made up his mind and snapped his eyes back to Quark. "I was just wondering. Do you feel different?"

He was looking at more than just Quark— He was looking at his complexion again.

Quark sneered. "Yeah, I feel loads different. I'm happier, lighter, more at peace, more conscientious—"

"No, I mean, without pyrocyte."

"Yeah. I don't know," Quark relented.

"It's just weird. That's all. You're so… red."

"Yeah?"

Fidgeting, Rom said, "I heard you were going to let other doctors look at you again."

"I am," Quark replied gently.

"You don't like it, do you? I think it's kind of freaky the way they want to pretty much take you apart to find something, and they don't even know what that something is."

"It's worth it for the truth, and that's something also worth more than latinum."

"But they're still not gunna believe it," said Rom.

"Most-likely not."

Rom sighed; he might have asked more about it, but he changed his mind. "Knowing what the truth is and how to follow it all the time is hard to do either way."

"You don't," said Quark simply.

"What?"

"You don't always know what to do all the time. That's the secret. You just have to be willing to respond to whatever the River brings your way, and the truth, if you want it, will come to you."

"I understand," said Rom. "…Now."

Quark put his hand on his brother's shoulder. "I know."

Rom smiled. "Oh, yeah. There's one more thing."

"What?"

"You're excited about something, aren't you?"

Quark looked at him in surprise, and then he grinned. "Who dares call the Grand Nagus an unobservant idiot?"

"Well, what is it?" Rom pressed.

He needed good news.

"Well," said Quark clapping him on the shoulder again as he leaned leisurely back against the wall as nonchalantly as possible. "You may be a seasoned father by now, but I'm gunna officially welcome you to uncle-hood, Rom."

Rom squinted first very hard as he stared down at the tiled floor. Slowly his eyes widened. His grin spread too, and he looked at Quark with great delight in his understanding and surprise. He swelled with pride.

"Congratulations, Brother!" he exclaimed as he stood up to hug him, but he stopped suddenly. "You do mean that Sharzee's having a baby, right?"

"What else would I mean?" Quark teased. "Do you have any other brothers I don't know about?"

"Well, then, let me introduce you to fatherhood, Quark!" declared Rom. "It's a tough business! Tougher than any life of a proprietor of any enterprise."

"The suspense is killing me," sneered Quark.

"And children don't like that kind of sarcasm."

"I'll do my best to save it all for you, Rom."

"Thank you. Uh. Mmph!"

But his annoyance quickly gave way as Quark gave him a chuckle. In fact he gave a little laugh of his own.

"You're welcome."

#

"Kukalaka! Kukalaka! Kukalaka!" said a very tiny Julian Bashir.

It was drizzling outside— a slow, deep, omnipresent sound through his bedroom window. Some would call it dreary, but Jules did not think of it like that. He would not have been able to put into words what it made him think. He felt happy just as much as when the twinkly stars were shining brilliantly in the sky like little nonpareils that one could pick up on a sweaty finger and put into one's mouth. Such slow drizzling rain was like stars falling to the ground twinkling in the solar lamp glowing in the yard from last night's powerful sunset. Wetness spattered the ground like liquid stars coming to earth with magic from another universe.

He had no words for anything then— far less than other children, and he was beginning to understand that it was not normal. It made his parents unhappy. It made him frustrated. He was small, frail, and not good enough at school, but here he was a poet of life. He was muse incarnate, one with his poetry that no one could read or understand— an alien on his home planet, but in his sanctuary he was at least articulate to himself.

He understood his bed. He understood his toy chest and the blocks and toy ships and pods and games— though he did not play them by the rules that were made for them, he did know the rules he made up for them and they could be quite elaborate. He understood his window looked outside. Inside he was warm and dry and outside he would not be. The rain and the lamp were outside where the earthy smells came flowing through the screen carrying with it that damp air to enrich his senses. He understood that.

He understood the worms that would wriggle to the surface. Later when the rain would stop, he would remove them from the walkways and put them back into the grass so that they would not be damaged. He may not understand the purpose of worms or was even able to speak their name properly, but he knew that they needed earth and that they would fry in the baking midsummer sunshine after the rain had ended if they did not get back to where they belonged. They could possibly could get stepped on too by people who were not looking.

There was a time he washed off the wound of a worm like his mother did when he hurt himself. He even tried to put self-healing disinfectant on it before his mother came frantically alarmed to find him spilling out a cabinet without knowing how in the universe he had managed to open it.

Right now, after looking intently out the window and gazing at the life-giving droplets splashing onto the thirsty earth, he scooted away from the sill and returned to his patient at hand.

Kukalaka was sitting with the utmost patience. He may have had to deal with pain and sickness often, but he was always so brave about it— much braver than Jules. He just gazed up at his doctor with those gentle beads for eyes with complete trust. He seemed to say, "I trust you, doctor, and I need you. Please help me yet again. I owe my life to you ever since I was going to be thrown away as useless in the cold, cold outside. I know that you love helping so well those who others consider the dregs. There is no reason to be afraid."

And Jules in his articulation that no one could understand well but himself and sometimes his parents, could only speak to the little patient, "Liw, liw!" Kukalaka knew this meant, "I will always be your doctor, Mr. Kukalaka. Everything that happens to me is nothing to my patients, sir. I will always doctor you and everyone else in my care. I vow it with all my soul!"

And Kukalaka beamed back in his uncomplaining, gentle way. His eyes sparkled with life in the dim lighting of the bedroom. He seemed to smile despite his pain, and he seemed to nod. His eyes reflected the liquid stars.

"I know, Doctor," he seemed to say. "I'll always remember that."

Then Jules went straight to work. It was the ear this time that had the problem, and he knew exactly what to do. Taking his fingers tenderly, he inspected the damage outwardly. Taking a small block from his toy chest, he aimed it there. Yes! It was the very problem. Then he could mend it.

"Heeloo, heew, heew, aghum," Jules chimed merrily. This meant, "I like nothing better than to heal people. Healing's what I live for. Even if I can't be happy all the time such as when I am at school, I can at least heal others. Someday, I'll heal everyone. It makes me so very happy, especially right now. I could sing like the rain outside about it, happy as can be. Bones, hearts, and stomachs all will be set right, and I'll dry up everyone's tears and they can play and work and all that living that they must do. I love to heal. Please, oh what runs dear and lovely time and space and all that's in between, let me heal everyone! Thank you. That's all."

#

Bashir smiled as he looked up from his PADD. He had been dabbling in poetry again. Rain was one of his original inspirations for poetry, and he did in fact consider those first childhood thoughts of his as early poems. He wondered mildly that if he had been unaltered by his worrying parents if he would eventually have become articulate to others enough to do some form of poetry.

He may not have ever understood any sort of mathematics or memorized foreign languages or be able to hold in his vitals so he could appear dead, or think at lightning speed in serious medical emergencies, but he could somehow picture himself as a boy on Earth never having gone to any medical school or Starfleet Academy. He could actually picture himself a man being strangely content at a stool over a meal writing simple poetry about rain and dirt, life and love, and never knowing what was beyond his little circle of life— sheltered and ignorant, though perhaps forever misunderstood in a culture that valued so highly intellect and pressing the boundaries of science and the politics of social structuring. He would have remained innocent, he supposed, and perhaps happy in his own way, but he knew he never would have felt fulfilled.

All that had happened to him seemed to be in answer to a simple prayer of a very innocent little boy as selfless as he was "heartless" in that way that J. M. Barrie once wrote of children and their necessity to the world to remind adults what innocence is. His intention to love and heal everyone had been sincere in its selflessness, but in his innocent heartlessness, he had not known at all what sacrifice truly meant. Any too painful of a strain would have had him running to Father or Mother quicker than a rabbit to its den in the wake of a fox. Of course, that simple boy would rather be safe and warm than fulfilled in the end, but now even as an old, wearied grownup, strong in body but heavy in mind, he may still have been willing in soul for that promise and prayer, but he was still struck with that natural instinct to flee like a rabbit to its den from the wily fox of pain, though he was not so innocent anymore.

Of course to leave would not be evil in itself, and to go where it was safe and warm and familiar, and where everyone's physical needs were taken care of by the powers that be like, robots programmed to be parents to toddlers. Bashir knew and felt so deeply that if he went back to his old life he would never feel fulfilled no matter what its promises and dreams of ultimate evolution. They were tales told to those in a crib that was no longer a baby's bed but a prison cell. All the knowledge of cures and safety to the physical body and all the prowess of genius like a demigod before his slower-minded peers and all the honor endowed upon him from all his people and all the universe that he had known before for the good of the Human collective would never fill his heart with anything but regret now.

It would be a lie against his childish vow. He could not explain it even with all the power of articulation he now possessed like Atlas holding the whole world on his shoulders. He could explain it no better than he did as that tiny child, but it was as if his destiny had been set before him since that time. His life had been set up for this mission of life where rain had freedom to fall like sprites into the earth and the earth had room to breathe between the droplets and live.

He stared out of the window as his food was quickly growing cold. His hand gripped the PADD so absently than he might have dropped it had he been less advanced by DNA reconstruction that made him who he was in a physical sense. In a spiritual sense, though, he was still that simple little imaginative child, and he had always known that. One could not escape who he or she truly was no matter what science could do for one cosmetically. Even mental prowess was cosmetic when it came to who you were on the inside— deeper than the mind and even deeper than the heart.

He blinked away from the window back to his PADD rather than his food and read again his poem as it was so far:

How cosmetic the wisdom of fashion,

How fashionable the knowledge of cosmos

In comparison to earthen passion

For the rain dripping on the dromos—

Far more than the temple of Saturn

To which all souls are drawn away

From their simple path of love in turn

For power or wealth, dream and laigh;

To pave a world in one's own image

Over the fields of one's dawning home.

In vain do the pavers pave over their lineage.

Through the cracks the flower will ever roam,

Because the life of dew that strikes them still

No matter how thick the tomes of pride

Shelved above the tales fulfilled

While beaming cheeks blind in one's manmade tide.

Oh, that last line was a little long… and perhaps did not make a whole lot of sense. Was there a better way for expressing one blinding oneself by one's own proudly beaming and bloating cheeks under one's eyes? He recalled briefly the sentiment put by another poet suddenly, but he did not want to copy that. He wanted his sentiment to be his own.

He shrugged.

He would rather think about poetry than about facing what he had decided to do, which had come upon him like a tidal wave as Nog took flight into the magical stars ("sky lamps" as the Bajoran call them). Bashir was left on foreign soil where he would have to make a living in a way so unknown to Earth now that it was like going back to the Middle Ages, but it was not making money and paying tolls and for supplies that made Bashir uncomfortable. He had used currency with Bajorans and with Ferengi for so long it was more of an afterthought that it was so much different from how things were run on Earth.

What are you going to do now? thought Bashir idly despite himself as his mind wandered from his poem. Your parents certainly aren't going to be too thrilled about you joining the Ferengi Alliance, now are they?

Bu it was even more than that. He did not want to be selfish. He was happy that so much had been done through him and was humbled that it went so well despite his stubbornness after the swell of love died away. When he was brought back to that medical bay biobed and overseen by Tenniel— How long ago that seemed now! It was only a year and a half ago. Now here he was at a restaurant in the middle of Ferenginar City planning his tip to the server.

He was undergoing such a treatment to such a long, long illness that it was like a cripple suddenly able to walk after years trapped in infirmity. But Bashir had already done his leaping and dancing like a newborn fawn. He could not help it that he felt a little lonely. He wanted to be able to continue basking in the joy of spring that was surrounding him, but he still felt on the outside of all this only watching through the window. He was not a Ferengi in the physical sense. No one would pretend to argue that in spite of Rule Number 284, but he still did not feel like one figuratively either.

He was a Human, but was he even really that? These days he felt more Ferengi than Human and it was the oddest feeling he had ever had, and yet now facing the reality of being here potentially forever, he was not certain his ever-growing Ferengiphile tendencies were quite enough to release his solitude. He felt more comfort in thought and, yes, prayer than he did in even being in the warm and cordial company of Noi and his family. Strangely it was Quark and Pel that he felt most at home with, though he usually did not have the pleasure of being in their company at the same time.

He was not even sad. Grief was hardly what he would dare call it. He was not alone entirely. He had, well, the Dayitela who did not just create Ferengi, after all, but he did feel longing for his own people. His own stories to be breathed new life into rather than to be catalogued like specimens of death in a laboratory. He longed for the hearts of his people to swell with love not lust— true selfless love of innocence. It was not to be. At least not yet.

He would be a doctor here and be content, and he was sure after this little funk, he would indeed be quite fulfilled even if not always safe and warm. He would be a doctor here— a confident of Nagi, a witness of time and space and proof of all that had happened. He would be there as moral support to the now rather overwhelmed Quark.

Quark sought Bashir more than he admitted for someone to put him upright on his feet again. Actually, it was the very next day that he would be joining Quark to guard him in his next medical examination. He did not trust all the doctors who wanted to examine him. Whether to make false evidence or to even harm Quark, their motives could not always be trusted. Bashir would remain by his side whenever Quark needed with all his genetically enhanced sense and mental prowess. He would be a guard dog keen to any unfriendly or dishonest gesture. In fact, it had almost become an obsession to keep an eye on Quark even when he wasn't being examined…

"…Dr. Bashir?"

He did not have to be a Ferengi to hear his name from across the bar. His mind returned to his place at his table even before he turned. The voices, the clanking glasses, the drumming hands upon the tabletops, the Ferengi laughter— it still sounded so much like cackling, but it only made Bashir amused these days.

He heard just barely the voice that answered the younger, crisper query. It was the voice of Brunt who at the moment worked as a server, and it was quite the sight to see him so humbled in a green server's suit.

"He's right over there, miss," he said with a bow and a cordial smile. "Would you like me to tell him, or would you like to go yourself?"

"I'll just go to him myself."

The younger voice belonged to Pel; though Bashir could not quite see her small frame yet above the crowd of standing Ferengi all surrounding someone in particular explaining something in a very excited manner. But Pel slid easily out of the way of a leg sweeping behind a particularly tall Ferengi suddenly leaning over the table of the guffawing throng. Her brightly smiling face was like a finely-cut beam of sunlight through a cloud of a storm breaking up.

Bashir could not help but smile back. A lady's charming smile was ever a weakness of his, and even through her Ferengi-styled sneer it looked to Bashir aesthetically sweeter than the smile of the loveliest woman on Earth.

Oh, he had spent too long a time among Ferengi!

He was sure to her he still looked like a funny over-sized pink weasel with tiny ears and tuft of mane. But then she had spent enough time on Pelipa to at least not think him too strange in appearance. Their friendship remedied most of what they might think strange about each other, and it was a friendship Bashir held dearly.

As she came nearer he saw just a touch of sadness in her eyes that would not have been detected by the eyes of a Ferengi, and she was too calm in her approach to be noticed by any Ferengi hearing unless one was listening very hard. He saw with his pristine vision even in the dim lighting of the restaurant all that she wanted: a little pick-me-up in her own loneliness. She may be among her own people, but Bashir knew full well that she felt as out of place anywhere as much as Bashir did. Not in sorrow, but in something that could not be explained. The lonely form camaraderie in one another was a matter of course, and there was nothing all too poetic about it.

"Your tube grubs stopped sizzling," Pel remarked with a teasing scrunch of her nose.

"Hmm, yes, I suppose they've grown rather cold by now," said Bashir with a candid shrug. "Would you like to sit down and I'll order some more?"

"No, I'll order us some gumbo, if you're still hungry," said Pel. "I've been having a hankering for it, and Quark's is the best worm and eel gumbo in the capital I've heard."

"I haven't had the pleasure of trying it yet," said Bashir. "Let's try it together, shall we?"

Pel nodded readily and took the seat in front of him.