JMJ

Chapter Forty

Love at Last Sight

"So you're staying then?"

Julian Bashir had hardly got his first finger-tong-full of gumbo before Pel spoke.

He closed his mouth and smiled as he put the tongs back into his cup. He looked her in those twinkling blue-green eyes staring quite expectantly at his. Her scrunched nose lifted her sneer into partly a grin.

"Yes, I am staying," Bashir said. "Probably for good too."

"You can't escape from the suction calls of the rivers of muck!" teased Pel.

"Well," said Bashir spreading his smile out generously. "Admittedly there are things I don't like, but the things I do like more than make up for them, especially now."

"But I suppose you get lonely."

"'Lonely,'" repeated Bashir.

"Well," said Pel, her face softening with sympathy. "You're a Human."

"Yes?"

"You're in a very strange world."

"It's not that strange," Bashir assured her. "It's just filled with people who work and live and want to be left alone to do so in peace. Humans are not so very different in that regard. In fact at heart we are very much the same even if it doesn't look like it now."

That sympathy in Pel's face turned into deep affection, and she seemed further encouraged somehow.

"So you're one of us?"

"In a way."

"You don't miss seeing other people with thick hair on their heads or more delicate nails or flatter teeth and are taller with smooth pink little kitty noses?"

Bashir laughed.

Pel laughed too.

"I've become quite accustomed to your forms, Pel. That never was a big issue with me. Most of my childhood was spent seeing people from all sorts of worlds."

"I see," said Pel. "Then I'm the one who isn't used to it as much as you are having lived my whole childhood hardly even catching sight of a Hupyrian in person, but I am learning."

"You already knew from an early age not to judge primarily on appearances."

"You know far too much about me, Doctor, to not consider it home here, I'm starting to think."

"When I'm away from the sight of you all, it's stranger than not. It's not that I in the least forgot the foreignness of you from me. Nor do I want to be a physical Ferengi, but… well, I'll tell you this. I can't believe it myself, but I was speaking straight up Ferengi to the captain of the Defiant with only the UT hiding that fact through a very thin veil."

Pel gasped. "You're joking!"

"No."

"Did he know?"

"I suppose he figured it out after a while. No one was that surprised that I was leaving."

"Oh," said Pel. "It was the same with me. I mean, at my original home."

"Do you ever think of going to visit your family?"

Pel nodded absently, but her smile proved that it was not all a dreadful thought.

"I haven't been fair to my mother, Dr. Bashir. I have learned going about the universe how very dear she actually is to me. Just as much as my father. I used to think it was my father who did not love her as much as he loved me, but it was me who loved and appreciated him more than I did my mother. I admired him. I wanted to be like him, but my mother was in some ways, even with her fretting, just as strong as he was, maybe more. I want to tell her how strong I think she is. I'm just waiting for the right moment."

"I know you'll find that moment."

"There's some business that needs to be cleared up first, but that should be handled very soon." She nodded promptly; her attention refocused quite strongly on Bashir again.

He felt a climax building. This conversation had in some ways been a preparation. He felt it very much to be a business negotiation. They had been eating a little so that their stomachs were not empty. They were comfortable. She had paved the way to set a mood she wanted. Now she had it, and she was going to strike with true Ferengi precision, the pattern of which Bashir had become far too familiar with.

"Even being among one's own people without a family to go to…" she first led like a teaser advertisement.

Bashir looked steadily at her.

She hesitated only for a second. He knew her too well to know that it was not exactly a pause for dramatic effect. Her own heart fluttered with a second of indecision, but she quickly pressed forward like a pilot into a meteor shower, trusting her instincts.

"I just wanted to say," said Pel as candidly as a singing bird at a dew-filled rosy dawn, "that no matter how at home you feel among a people, when work is done you always go to a place that you call your own. We always valued very highly that commodity. A place where no one can tell you how to think or what you can and cannot do with your own things or property. No one used to dare. It's a crime of the greatest degree if only culturally. It's so deeply part of our hearts that it doesn't need a Rule of Acquisition. It's your own palace, just for you and in it you are lord."

"'My house is my house,'" said Bashir.

"'Along with all its possessions,'" Pel agreed with deep seriousness. "But whether they admit it or not, a Ferengi's greatest possession in that house is family. The heirs of any kingdom no matter how small are always the most important along with your partner and adviser."

Bashir chuckled after bite of gumbo.

"You are very far from your mother and father, Dr. Bashir," Pel went on. "You are a man, and so it must be, but you are farther now more than ever."

"Yes." Bashir had no reason to deny it.

"You've followed after a star that you believe leads you to what is of most value. 'Home is where the heart is, but the stars are made of latinum,'" said Pel with the most effortless finesse.

"If there is one thing you and Quark ever had in common, it is how you have a way of making the Rules of Acquisition sound truly exquisite."

"They may not be of much spiritual value in the same way that we once believed," said Pel, "but they are still the truth of what a physical life always is among the mortal realm."

"I know. Cruel in some ways but at least at a naturalistic level just."

"Or just an understanding of basic sentient behavior rather than thinking of it scientifically," said Pel. "So, you left home no matter what you gave up. You took the proposition set before you by the highest hand and left everything to find your latinum. Even though at times you regretted your decision, you never gave up completely, and for that, you can't blame a Ferengi for admiring such strength of character." She was speaking very practically now. "It may not be a proposition of the highest degree, but I don't see how it can be in conflict with it; I have a proposition for you, if you'd like to hear it."

"By all means continue. I'm eager to hear it."

"I could be your family, Dr. Bashir."

Bashir stared.

There was not even disbelief. He simply went completely blank. He knew exactly what she meant, and if there was any surprise at all, it was only surprise at himself for not seeing it coming sooner. But dread far greater than loneliness struck him at that moment that proved to him that he only had not seen it coming because he had not wanted to. His denial was practically sealed as he lost articulation.

He had already taken it as a matter of course that he would never have the privilege of a woman by his side in marriage, which was exactly what Pel was proposing. He could not stop the echoes of pain from every woman who had rejected his lonely beseeching and even pathetic gestures, but even as he stared at Pel in that blank and horrid moment, his mind began to work as though the answer to his question was being answered by the gentle guiding voice of the one who had proposed the task that had led him to his "latinum".

His genetic enhancement made him unlike any other Human. Pel had already worked that out in her clever mind too. He was immune to the affect pyrocyte had on other Humans. Even Leeta as a Bajoran had sometimes had difficulties, especially in pregnancies which had led to her unborn children having to be injected with pyrocyte while at the same time giving her medicines to protect her from its affects. But children through Bashir and Pel would not have this problem. He was compatible to have a full family with this hardy little being. It was as if it was meant to be.

She is exactly what you want from a partner, he found himself thinking. She is spirited but sensitive, straightforward but clever. She needs you in this time of transition towards an honorable time of peace for her people to soothe her restless heart, but she will also be a loving support you desire in your own restlessness.

His brows knit. His lip trembled, and everything in him tightened as he stared in utter disbelief at the open face before him. Even now he tried to resist what the very logical part of his mind told him, but Pel did not look so playful anymore about it. Her whole face fell with distress, and Bashir was completely beside himself that he was hurting her, but he could not quite break free of his muteness just yet. At least he tried desperately to smooth his brow.

"Dr. Bashir!" she said straight out. "I didn't mean to cause you— well, I just thought since we knew each other so well now and like family— at least you know me so well, and I am more than willing to learn more about you. We might at least be family to each other. You already are to me. I do love you, and I don't want to hurt you. Even from the moment I accepted that you weren't insane, there was something about you and your need to help people that I did love. You were almost instantly my friend. You soon became the best friend I've ever had."

Bashir could almost see it her eyes the words, "I may be able to negotiate with whole planets but I'm terrible at trying to introduce a relationship. Ug!"

But still Bashir only stared. To his knowledge, Pel had not even tried to have a romantic relationship with anyone since Quark, and Bashir had to admit that this was far more gentle and sincere than that fiasco had been.

Could innocence really be given back? He bowed his head in awe. Everything that was happening now seemed to prove it to him, and Bashir at last submitted to it with whole-hearted love. Love of love. True and unadulterated love that sentient beings were made to love.

"I broke him," Pel at last said.

"No!" Bashir gasped, and he clasped her leathery orange hand suddenly enough to make her jump. "No," he said then very kindly, "it's not that! It's not any of that, Pel."

Now it was Pel who was silent; though she was not so much blank as more open than before as she looked at Bashir. It was very much that Ferengi listening look, and hers was deeper than most Bashir had seen, so that for those inexperienced with Ferengi, it would have looked like utter stupefied shock with mouth absently ajar and breathing in such withheld silent breaths.

"Dr. Bashir?" she whispered.

"I never wanted to presume," he said. "Never. I cared about you too much to hurt you or our friendship. I didn't want to hurt the love I had for you."

Pel smiled and shook her head.

"I should've been more tactful about bringing it up," she said back to her candid manner of speaking.

Bashir laughed. It was a strange sort of laugh, as though he had not laughed like that in forever. Perhaps he hadn't. It was the laugh of a child.

"If you don't want our relationship to be anything deeper than what it is, I accept it," said Pel.

"I don't think our relationship can be any deeper, Pel," said Bashir, "but if you would like it to be different, then I would be honored."

Pel breathed out through her gazing grin. "Really?" she asked in the smallest sweetest spritely little voice.

"Yes. I don't know if anyone in the world could mean the same to me as you do, Pel. 'Home is where the heart is…'"

"'But the stars are made of latinum,'" said Pel almost automatically.

"Then I don't have to go far," Bashir replied. "After all, those stars are always in your eyes."

Blinking those eyes once or twice self-consciously, Pel's ears flushed bright yellow. She sneered wider than ever, but the sneer fell just as quickly. She stood up and jumped on him with the familiarity of a sibling, but the intensity of a chosen friend that needed no tie of blood to stay secure.

Some people nearby looked over with interest, but neither Bashir nor Pel paid them any mind as Bashir held her back. He started suddenly as they began to part and he saw the tears clouding those stars he had just mentioned. He brushed them away so he could see them better, and Pel gazed with a deep and satisfied love with a gratefulness that Bashir also felt and shared perfectly in tune. So very different but equal in every way.

"I suppose I should start calling you, 'Julian' then. That's how your two names work, right?" said Pel trying to tease through the choke in her throat.

"I'd like that," said Bashir not teasing at all.

"Then," said Pel also dropping the tease. "Julian, I only have one name, but I give you permission to call me fully 'Maeeshpela'. In fact, there are very few people that it would give me more pleasure to allow to call me that. Just like you did when we first met." Her little laugh was like a chime of bells at the door to a new future.

"Ma…ee…shpe…la," Bashir said like a promise, slowly and with love on each syllable— each letter. He spoke it like a solemn prayer.

Pel bowed her head for the "amen".

"You speak it as though you were born in the Great Bayou," Pel said lifting her head; she paused briefly. "Would you like to come home with me there to visit my family for the announcement of our engagement?"

"I would love that."

#

Arka Days had returned again. Never had the capital looked so festive, but part of that was because there were not nearly as many holo-ads covering the decorations. Aside from buying and selling, and hustle and bustle and love for their newfound joy and with one another, there was something on everyone's minds more than the day, and that was that the day before Arka, the Grand Nagus had a very important announcement to make. Then everyone would be off on a three-day holiday for everyone with nearly every place closed in the whole city— at least to commerce. There were many places being used during the occasion for parties and dinners and for praises of thanksgiving to the Dayitela.

The Clarusians were the only ones who intended to stay open for business if they had any at the capital. They were admittedly, quite dumbfounded by the behavior of the natives of Ferenginar. Those Hupyrians who were under no vow of silence through their own beliefs whispered charitably and in brief the events how they saw them. The Tarahongians were the most pleased of the non-biological members of the Ferengi Alliance. Even those who had not joined the new ancient faith of the Ferengi were pleased to join in with the festivities. The Hupyrians were mostly just accepting everything, unsure still if their excitable associates were going to keep this up for long, but Clarusians were in utter shock.

One such Clarusian was staring blanker than a listening Ferengi in his little shop, and he was quite happy to be safe from the merrymaking on the other side of a floating screen rather than there in person in a ball of recycling water. The Ferengi in front of him was chuckling to himself as left with his gift all wrapped up in a fine little box. It was probably one of the last customers he would get before tomorrow.

Yes, and it was a gift. It was not a bribe for a boss or a perspective lover either making him more unusual than most other Ferengi even at this time. It was Brunt, actually, and the Clarusian knew him well enough to wonder if he was mistaking him for someone who only looked much like him despite the name on his business liscense from his digital transaction of latinum to the Clarusian's account.

During this soggy warmish afternoon with the sun poking in through the clouds now and then over the dingy city, Brunt was quite in his usual chipper mood, as he bid "Profitable Arka" to the Clarusian in his farewell. His water plume bounced above his head outside, bobbing like a living mushroom from an aerial view from one side of the street to the other. He dove back inside the far dryer causeways towards what used to be known as the Sacred Marketplace.

It was now simply known as Capital Square; though some were in favor of renaming it Quark Square. Brunt could laugh to think how embarrassed Quark would be if they managed that. It was funnier still that Quark would not make anyone pay for the usage of his name either. In fact, he might pay them not to do it. Some parts of the square were used for business still, but it had many other purposes now. A type of shrine dedicated to the event of the Dayitela's visit a year ago was a popular new destination for pilgrimage. Charity bases were also numbered here and growing in number. A library dedicated to the history of Ferengi was in the process of being built.

The Tower of Commerce was still usually called that, but it too was not quite the place it used to be. Though all trade and commerce was indeed still centered around this massive tower with gusto, the honesty of it would have given previous Nagi heart attacks. The business of charity was quickly replacing those newer taxes that Brunt had been so recently creating. Those would have made those Nagi drop faster anyway.

Thanks to Belongo and Traymak and even a little bit of insight from Brunt himself taxes upon the citizens of the Alliance were at last abolished. Once again, one's profits were one's own to keep from the greatest to the least and no one had the right to take them from anyone else. Yet the generosity with which the once miserly hands of Ferengi dished out such lush sums money to those who had nothing might make one might think they were on Bajor.

What a joke, really, thought Brunt. The greatest joke in the universe. A Ferengi giving charity without expecting anything in return.

He could not help but cackle out loud about it if only to himself.

Someone nearby looked at him strangely wondering what was so terribly funny, but Brunt only bowed to him in a wide and generous swoop before swinging forward again merrily.

But it's not really that much different from what a Ferengi expects to get in return in the end, Brunt thought on. That's the mistake so many aliens have always made about us. The misconception was so great that even some Ferengi did not understand, and the Clarusians for sure. The only reason why the Ferengi were so tight with their money was because they believed that that money would buy for them a place in the afterlife. I should know. I exploited so many of my own people with that devotion so simply followed by those humbler than me. How much more then should a Ferengi be willing to give that same money away for an even better afterlife!

No matter how he put it, it still sounded like the greatest joke. It was the best because in its irony no matter how biting it was, it was only made keener because of its joy rather than its misery. How could one expect such satisfaction from such bitter irony? But it was true.

Across the Square Brunt made his way to the Tower and past the Commerce up to the political sphere of the Nagi. It was here he met to his surprise a most familiar face.

"Lek!"

Lek gave him a look that perhaps not was nearly as ebullient as Brunt's but it was just as sneering.

"I'm surprised you're still on-planet," said Brunt.

"I'm here for the announcement at the Nagus' insistence," remarked Lek very dryly as he eyed the package with suspicion.

Brunt was used to that kind of reception and it bothered him very little. In fact it bothered him now less than it did when he was a power-hungry liquidator.

"And I'm not one to decline from an invitation of the Nagus," Lek added.

"I wouldn't think so," said Brunt. "Besides, I think this is going to be a more dramatic event than simply thanking everyone for their support."

"Not everyone is in support," said Lek idly.

"I know, and so does the Nagus, and the Nagus knows his limits."

With that Brunt bid him goodbye with a broader sneer than ever as he knew Lek to be giving one last look at his parcel, but he soon disappeared beyond his view into the next corridor. Here he deposited his parcel for delivery on Tarahong.

It was going to no Nagus as Lek might have supposed, nor to anyone he might consider a superior. Brunt would rather no one know who the package was for but the one who was meant to receive it. He did not have a return address either. Lat Lorka. Nothing more. It was the last of seven. Inside each one was a small chest as for a treasure of some grand fairy tale, but inside was a receipt telling of all the money restored to them from the thieving cruelty of the notorious stepbrother of the family.

#

Rom had said a lot of things during his speech. He supposed it had all become rather long-winded, and he hoped that everyone was in enough good spirits to tolerate him as he realized that towards the end. The threat of Keeoopii had ended. The intrusion of the government into personal affairs was also at an end to the relief of most people. The Pelipans were indeed going to join the Alliance. A few laws instated during the end of Zek's reign were still in tact such as that monopolies were illegal and that anyone regardless of gender could obtain a business license. Otherwise most of the laws from before were basically reinstated though cleaned up from corruption. The generosity people showed for each other in general made Rom feel tears in his eyes and a choke that almost lost his voice in mid-speaking, but he managed to the end.

"…The last thing of all I wish to say is that this is going to be my last speech."

Ignoring some of the looks of surprise or expected silence, he turned suddenly to Belongo who looked prepared for this; he sounded a little hesitant nonetheless. He stepped forward bravely and bowed to the Nagus.

"I'm stepping down as Grand Nagus and giving it to the hands of one who is far more capable than I am," Rom said looking at his successor. "Belongo son of Green."

"Yes, Grand Nagus."

Rom took a deep and important breath, "Do you Belongo son of Green vow to take full responsibility the duty of Grand Nagus, the navigator of the ship of state at that solemn bow to navigate the, well, I guess, the Great Material Continuum in what it means now, avoiding the shoals of bankruptcy and seeking the strong winds of prosperity?"

"I do vow it!" Belongo promised.

"Then!" said Rom and he handed him the scepter of authority. "This is for you."

And he bowed with reverence, kissing the scepter's head.

Everyone else immediately bowed as well.

Rom felt more overwhelmed by the power of giving such authority away than having it handed to him in the first place. As he lifted his head, all the power was now in the hands of Belongo, who already looked quite noble holding it. He was truly worthy of the title of "nagus"*. Not like Rom who had certainly been a king. Belongo fit navigator so very perfectly, though. In Rom's mind, at least (he could not speak for everyone) he looked so much nobler than the scepter that the scepter of previous deceit was unworthy of him. He had been such a guide and a navigator already in all that he had been done for the Alliance while in prison even with Traymak's help.

Once Rom withdrew to the side of Leeta, he felt more himself again— more than he had in a long time. He was looking forward to wearing an ob-lappet, actually, and to starting that mechanic engineering career that others had been eager to help him with already. Leeta hugged him, and he smiled at her with full relief and confidence— more confidence than he had in a long while too. He took Nissa from Leeta's arms and squeezed her tightly, and she squealed with laughter as he tickled her behind the sounds of excitement all around him for Belongo.

"Grand Nagus Belongo, welcome aboard!" said the newly appointed First Clerk Traymak; the casualness of it was what Rom loved most. Ah, the people of Ferenginar that could show respect without pomp!

He exchanged glances quickly with his brother who smiled so sincerely back he could hardly call it a sneer. Of course Sharzee so close to being due had something to do with a little giddiness, he supposed. He loved Quark. He loved Leeta. His mother was there too and Zek, though a little quieter than usually as age was finally catching up with him enough to subdue most of his witticisms. They would be neighbors very soon now.

Rom and Leeta would be moving into a normal-sized dome house outside of Ferenginar City beside the new home of his mother. He would leave all that political stuff behind him. His mind was already there to that simpler, far nobler life. He loved his humble position as a normal, everyday Ferengi working hard for his family and to do his little part of moving the flow of latinum with the tides that came and went. But it was far more than that. He was truly in love at last with his Ferenginar.

Neen lat Grena.

FIN