The Long Mirage Page 3

  “Or maybe we don’t have to wait that long,” Candlewood said. “Maybe we can enter Vic’s program and start searching for clues about what’s happened to him.”

  “You would do that?”

  Candlewood set his fork down on his plate and stood up. “Let’s go,” he said.

  Nog didn’t need a second invitation.

  iv

  * * *

  Odo waited as patiently as he could while the doctor waved her scanner over his faux-Bajoran form. Lying on a diagnostic pallet in Newton Outpost’s otherwise-empty infirmary, he strived to keep still. He normally eschewed such examinations. The non-Changelings with whom he had lived—first the Cardassians, and then the Bajorans—had always wanted to study him to learn about his physical nature, but when he’d begun serving alongside Starfleet personnel, the UFP’s space service had tried to insist that he undergo regular medical checkups as part of their preventive-care regimen. Odo had occasionally relented—Captain Sisko had sometimes been particularly persuasive—but more often than not, the shape-shifter had demurred as a simple issue of maintaining his dignity and privacy.

  Since Doctor Girani had informed him that the situation with the strange new shape-shifting life-form had been resolved peacefully and without further casualties, Odo felt less urgency to depart Newton Outpost. At the same time, it reinforced his decision that the time had come for him to return to his own people. He had no idea what he would discover back in the Dominion—how many Founders had returned, how the Vorta and the Jem’Hadar had fared in his absence, and what had become of Laas, Weyoun, and Rotan’talag, among others—but he wanted to find out.

  Odo felt the impulse to move—if not to alter his structure, then at least to stand up and walk about the compartment. He didn’t, though, nor did he protest the continued poking and prodding by Girani Semna. The Bajoran physician had not only nursed him back to health after his nearly lethal encounter with the Ascendant link, she had gone out of her way to do so. She had traveled all the way to Newton Outpost from her home on Bajor specifically so that she could tend to his compromised mental and physical condition. He very well might owe her his life, and he felt that it would be unjust for him to deny her the final ministrations of her care.

  Of even greater importance, Odo believed that he actually needed to be examined. Not since he had contracted the morphogenic virus during the Dominion War had his corporal well-being been in such doubt. His explosive contact with the Ascendant link had left him in the Changeling equivalent of a coma, with no internal cognition and no sensory awareness. He regained consciousness weeks later, only to find himself in an amorphous state and unable to alter his form. He did perceive Girani attempting to help him convalesce, and with her aid and the passage of more time, he eventually regained his shape-shifting abilities.

  Odo began to squirm atop the bio-bed, and with an effort, he stilled his movements. “That’s all right,” the doctor said with a gentle touch to his shoulder. The hum of the scanner ceased, and the doctor secured the device in her tricorder. “I see nothing that indicates that you’re in any medical danger.” She peered up over Odo’s head at a display of diagnostic readings. “But I am still a little concerned about your metabolism.”

  “I am tired,” Odo admitted, “but besides that, I feel fine.”

  “I don’t think it’s anything to be concerned about,” Girani said. Odo pushed himself up on the pallet, and the doctor stepped back so that he could swing his legs down and bring himself up to a sitting position. “After what you’ve been through, it’s to be expected. It will probably be a few more days, if not weeks, before you regain your full strength. Until then, I wouldn’t spend too much time changing your form. Even holding one shape for too long will probably exhaust you.”

  “I understand,” Odo said. “I presume that you’ve already made the same report to Starfleet.”

  “I have,” Girani told him without hesitation. In the time they had served together aboard the old Deep Space 9, Odo had always appreciated her forthrightness. “This is their facility, at least in part, and even though I’m not a member of Starfleet, I am functioning here under their auspices.”

  Odo harrumphed. “As a courtesy, I informed Admiral Herthum’s office this morning that I would be leaving Newton Outpost and returning to the Dominion as soon as I received your medical clearance.” Odo did not mention to the doctor that he considered his adhering to her recommendations also a matter of civility.

  “I take no issue with you departing the outpost,” Girani said, “unless you intend to shape-shift into some sort of spacefaring creature in order to travel any significant distance.”

  “That is precisely what I intended to do,” Odo said. “Instead, based on your report, Starfleet Operations has . . . offered . . . me passage aboard a shuttlecraft to Deep Space Nine, and to have a starship ferry me through the wormhole and to the Dominion. In deference to your medical advice, I’ve agreed.”

  “That’s good to hear, Odo,” the doctor said. “I wouldn’t want all my efforts to go to waste.”

  Odo grumbled again, and Girani met his crosspatch response with a smile. She reached forward and tucked the tricorder into a storage niche built into the side of the bio-bed. When she straightened, she said, “I’ll sign orders for your release from the infirmary. I’ll speak to Doctor Norsa and Commander Selten so that they can assign you quarters until the shuttlecraft is cleared to depart.”

  “Thank you, Doctor.”

  Girani smiled again, then headed for the door. Before she reached it, Odo hopped off the pallet and called after her. She stopped and turned just as the door glided open. “Yes?”

  “Thank you, Doctor,” he said again, but with a greater sense of gravity. “I . . .” He wanted to tell her that he didn’t know if he would have survived without all that she’d done for him, but propriety prevented him from uttering words he feared would sound mawkish. “Thank you,” he repeated.

  “You’re welcome,” Girani said. Before the moment could grow sentimental, she turned and continued out the door. The panel slid closed behind her, leaving Odo alone with his thoughts.

  v

  * * *

  “I can’t believe my ears!” Quark said, gesturing at the sides of his head. “And when a Ferengi says that, it means something.” Sitting in his office, Quark brought his hands down hard on the freestanding companel console he utilized as a desk. He considered severing the connection—not just the comm channel, but the business relationship he’d forged over nearly four months with Mayereen Viray. He looked down at his hand, so close to the control that would banish the private investigator’s image from the display, but he allowed a beat to pass in which to calm himself. He recited the 101st Rule of Acquisition in his mind—Profit trumps emotion—then reviewed the lie he’d been telling himself for nearly a year, when he’d first hired a different detective to track down Morn. During the Lurian’s long patronage of Quark’s, the barkeep had often joked that he considered the monthly remittance of Morn’s tab a long-term business asset—which the Ferengi then used as justification to pay somebody to locate his friend.

  “I am doing what you engaged me to do,” Viray said. The Petarian had a wide, flat nose, dark eyes, and flesh tinted a warm, golden hue. “If you wish to terminate our agreement, you need only say so.”

  “What I wish is that you would finally find Morn,” Quark said. “I’ve already paid for you to travel all over the quadrant—to Micsim Four, Ardana, Janus Six—and now you want me to provide even more funds to send you to a planet you won’t even identify.”

  “It’s not that I won’t identify the planet,” Viray said. “It’s that I can’t—at least not yet. It could be one of several different worlds, and I need resources not just to travel wherever I’m going, but to secure the information I need.”

  “Meaning that you need latinum to bribe somebody at the Geopolis spaceport to tell you where Mor
n headed.” Quark could appreciate the nature of the disbursement, but he resented continually having to pay for Viray’s expenses. He’d attempted to hire her on a flat-rate basis, but she’d declined, and so he’d had to remunerate her both for her time and for her working costs.

  “You know that I decline to discuss my operational methods,” Viray said. “My research tells me that the subject is on his way either to Mericor, Portas, or Delta Leonis. I need to determine which of those is his destination and secure passage there as quickly as possible, before his trail grows cold.”

  Quark shook his head. “I’ve heard this before,” he said. “I’ve already paid you more than I ever expected to. At some point, what started out as a legitimate investment can turn bad.”

  “I understand,” Viray said. “It’s your decision. If you choose, we can dissolve our professional relationship at once.”

  Quark hesitated. He wanted to find his old friend, and if he told himself the truth, not just to bring him back as a reliable customer; he wanted to make sure Morn was safe, and that the Lurian had overcome the grief and the guilt he felt after the destruction of the old Deep Space 9. But Quark had already spent a small fortune on Mayereen Viray, largely because she had come highly recommended, but also because the two cut-rate investigators he’d hired prior to the Petarian had demonstrated an old hew-mon maxim: You get what you pay for.

  Forget Earth adages, Quark chastised himself. I’m better off sticking with the Rules of Acquisition. With disappointment, he realized that he found himself on the wrong end of number 19: Satisfaction is not guaranteed.

  Quark made the decision to dismiss Viray from his employ, but before he could tell her so, she spoke up. “I know it’s been a long road, but I’m making progress,” she said. “I’m not just getting closer; I’m getting close.”

  Quark gazed around his office, as though he might find the answer hidden somewhere around him. Images played out across the rows of silenced but active screens lining the bulkhead, displays that carried information to him and his robust data-mining programs from all across the quadrant. Quark took in none of it, thinking that he very much wanted what the detective told him to be true, but that same desire also made him leery of assigning her words too much credence. Still, he needed to do something—either to proceed ahead with Viray or to discharge her and go in another direction.

  “All right,” Quark said. “Stand by.” He paused their comlink, then fetched a padd from the shelf behind him. He accessed the Ferengi Central Reserve’s current interest rates, then set them in service of the Bank of Luria’s fractional-moment compounding rules. Once he calculated a projected value for his account balance, he accessed the Lurian Commerce Net on a secure connection and, with a sigh of relief, verified the sum there. With the two amounts in agreement, Quark then flagged a portion of his assets for transfer to the coffers of Mayereen Viray and set the transaction in motion.

  Heat drained from his lobes, but he had committed to a course of action, at least for now. He set the padd to one side and resumed his comlink with Viray. “It’s done,” he told her.

  “I will collect the funds at once,” Viray said. “I don’t think you’ll regret this.”

  “I already regret it, considering all the latinum I’ve spent,” Quark said. “I just hope you can pinpoint Morn’s location before too much longer.”

  “You should be prepared that finding the subject may be the easy part of your endeavors,” Viray said.

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means that I’ve traced the last year and a half of the subject’s movements across the quadrant, into and out of Federation space,” the investigator said. “He’s made circumspect inquiries of and about some questionable characters. It seems apparent that he is pursuing some sort of extralegal, possibly nefarious agenda.”

  “I trust that you won’t disseminate any information you’ve gleaned while working for me,” Quark said. He immediately cursed himself for the thought. Trust, the 99th Rule of Acquisition taught, is the biggest liability of all. Never­theless, he appreciated Viray’s response.

  “Along with an attention to detail,” she said, “discretion is at the heart of my business.” She paused, then added, “But once I track the subject down, if you’re hoping to bring him back to the Bajoran system, to meet with him in some other location, or even just to contact him, you may find all of that far more difficult than you expect.”

  “What do you base that on?” Quark wanted to know.

  “I take it as a consequence of his actions,” Viray said. “The subject does not appear to know that his movements are being traced, and yet he is behaving in a manner so as to avoid detection. You want to find him, but he does not want to be found.”

  “I’ll take that into consideration,” Quark said, having no intention of doing so. He had hired Viray for her investigatory abilities, not for her opinions. “Once you ascertain which planet—”

  The companel picked up a high-pitched squawk, interrupting Quark. Viray snapped her head to one side and obviously saw something startling in the accommodations she’d taken somewhere on Janus VI. An instant later, the room went dark. Viray briefly turned back toward the companel, the grim expression on her face illuminated by the glow of her screen. She quickly punched at a control and was plunged into shadow. Quark could just make out her figure as she rose and backed away from the companel. Another shape came into view from the direction in which Viray had looked. Barely visible in the darkened room, the intruder closed on the private investigator.

  Quark checked his readout and saw that Viray had blanked the display on her end, but she’d also clearly left the channel open. She wants me to see what’s happening, he thought. She wants me to see, but she doesn’t want the intruder to know there’s a witness.

  “Who are you?” she asked loudly. Quark heard a reply, but too far from the companel for even his sensitive ears to make out.

  Viray continued to back away until she disappeared from view. Suddenly, the intruder lunged after her. Quark waited for something to happen, and then a second trespasser appeared. He crossed in front of the screen and out of sight. Quark heard voices he could not make out, and what sounded like a tussle. The two intruders then reappeared, hauling the private investigator along between them. They headed back in the direction from which they’d entered, but then they glanced over at the companel.

  Quark froze. He knew he couldn’t be seen, but the attention of the intruders unnerved him. When the second figure rushed toward Viray’s companel, Quark flinched. Panicked, he quickly reached for his own console, fumbled to find the appropriate control surface, and at last succeeded in terminating the subspace connection.

  Quark sat motionless for a few moments, staring at the blank screen. He didn’t know what to think about what he’d just witnessed, much less what, if anything, he should do about it. It did not seem at all unlikely to him that, plying her trade as a private investigator, Viray could have made enemies. Quark had no interest in getting involved, but he also concluded from what he’d seen that his hunt for Morn had been disrupted.

  Feeling his lobes begin to burn, Quark reached for his padd. He once again accessed his account at the Bank of Luria, knowing that it would be too late to recall his payment to Viray. When he inspected his balance, he saw that the funds he’d earmarked for the investigator had already been withdrawn.

  Absently, Quark reached across his panel and tapped at a control. Both the door to his office and the inner, soundproof panel slid open. An olio of noises greeted him: the voices of customers and employees, the ring of glassware, the cheeps and twitters of the dom-jot table, and best of all, the swirling hum of the dabo wheel.

  “Shorting the double-ride,” said Orcam, the dabo boy working the table. Quark closed his eyes and listened as the latest spin wound down. Despite that his revenues from gaming had far outpaced his expectations since the starbase had op
ened for business, he braced himself for the inevitable cry of “Dabo!” and a roar of excitement from the crowd; he had learned from bitter experience that when latinum abandoned you, it tended to do so in droves.

  But when the beeps of the wheel slowed and finally quieted, he heard Orcam call out, “Thirty-one gork. No winners.” Some customers groaned, but others excitedly called out their next bets: “Link plus,” “Bastion through,” and Quark’s personal favorite, “Triple over.”

  It sounded like another good night for the proprietor. Quark allowed himself a small smile, his slantwise teeth comfortingly sharp against the inside of his lips. But as he stood up and headed out into his consistently profitable Public House, Café, Gaming Emporium, Holosuite Arcade, and Ferengi Embassy to Bajor, he could only think about the fact that Morn had never set foot in the place.

  vi

  * * *

  Kira rose from the bed where she had lain as Doctor Boudreaux had completed his physical examination of her. The energy and emotion that had coursed through the vedek over the past few hours of her life had drained away, leaving her wholly enervated. More than anything, she craved sleep, but she also knew that Captain Ro likely still had many questions for her.

  Resisting the urge to sit on the edge of the bed—from where it would be a simple matter to lay her head back down on the temptingly soft pillow—Kira crossed to the bedroom door, to where the captain stood. Ro had offered to leave during Boudreaux’s workup, but the vedek had declined, not feeling the need for that level of privacy. On the other hand, she did appreciate that the captain had granted her request to undergo the exam somewhere other than in the infirmary—in the hospital, Ro had called it. For the time being, Kira wanted to keep her return confidential, until she could personally contact her friends and colleagues, both on the new Deep Space 9 and on Bajor. Ro had obliged by transporting the vedek directly from Even Odds’ dropship to guest quarters.