Ro snorted indelicately. “Oh please. The Columbia rarely dips below 10 Celsius this time of year and you fell in because you kept letting go of the sail handle.” She retrieved a log from a woodpile she’d gathered earlier. “Besides, you had a wetsuit on. You should have been warm enough. I thought Ferengi were used to water.”
“Damp, swampy, steady warm drizzle? Yes. Ice bath? No. It’s the difference between wet and drowned.” Shivering, he pulled the blanket tighter around him. “Not that I’m complaining or anything,” he added hastily.
“You? Of course not,” Ro said, clearly fighting down a smile. Placing the log on a large, flat tree stump, Laren raised an ax over her head and brought it down with a thwack.She gathered up the smaller pieces and fed them into the fire. Greedy fingers of flames gratefully accepted her offering.
“So,” she said, tipping back on her haunches. Scooting through the dirt, she settled against the weatherbeaten log, leaning back to rest her neck. She continued shifting and adjusting until she’d fitted the curve of her neck with the curve of the log. Her gaze went up at the moonless spring night. Pines jutted up all around them, their straight, prickle-covered branches aimed at the sky, threatening to puncture the smooth night canopy. Only intermittent wind gusts swayed the trees from their rigid posture.
“So…” he answered, knowing he’d surrender half ownership in the bar to Treir if she’d only page him with an emergency.
“Not like this matters, but I spent the last week before I started the Academy here. I’ve been to more exotic places since then, but I always feel awed when I come here. Millions of years of the land submitting to the relentless waters. And it’s like the water knew that if all the dirt and rock exterior was swept away, the planet’s soul would be exposed and all could see how majestic that soul was.”
Quark blinked. “I never took you for a poet, Laren.”
“All Bajorans are poets, Quark. Don’t you know that by now? We were poets when your kind were leaving slime trails through the mud of Ferenginar,” she teased.
“Sure you were, but was there any profit in your poetry?”
Ro threw a pinecone at him.
“So what’s next?” he said, imagining what recreational torture she might have conceived for round two.
“Ah. Now that’s a multilayered question.”
“Because—”
“Because if you’re asking what’s next tonight, I’d answer dinner, coffee, and maybe a night hike. There’s a watering hole not far from here frequented by the local wildlife—deer and raccoons. A family of beavers dammed up a water trickle and it became a pond,” she explained, scratching lines in the peaty soil with a stick. “But if you’re asking what’s next after today, or after next week, or next month after Bajor joins the Federation? Honestly. I don’t know.”
Quark said nothing. He knew that he and Ro were feeling the same sense of uncertainty about the future, both believing they’d have no place in the coming new order. For Quark, the prospect of starting over in some other galactic backwater didn’t have the same allure it once did during his youth. He suspected that was even more true for Laren.
“You know…after my second fall from Starfleet, I started to believe the reason I had so much trouble playing by its rules was that I kept finding causes that seemed more important than my career. First Garon II, then the Maquis…” She sighed, sprawling out so she could study the night sky. “I never meant to turn against Starfleet—a lot of who I am I owe to what I learned serving the Federation alongside good people. Both times, I eventually found myself faced with a choice. Both times, I followed my conscience. And both times, it ended in disaster.”
“So what are you saying?” Quark asked. “You think you made the wrong choices? Maybe you did, maybe you didn’t. But that isn’t really the issue.”
“It isn’t?”
“No. The problem with Starfleet is, its fundamental principles are flawed.”
Ro raised a sardonic eyebrow. “Oh, I can’t wait to hear where thisis going.”
Quark sighed, realizing he was joining the salmon again. “While it’s all well and good to want everyone to be happy, the reality is that making sure every world has food, medicine and education doesn’t guarantee happiness. As much as the Federation tries to fix what ails the quadrant—and hell, sounds like they’re starting to preach their good news to the Gamma and Delta quadrants, too—their way of doing things doesn’t work for everyone. Because no matter how hard they try, or how honorable their intentions, equality is a bogus ideal and you can never make everyone be ‘good’ the way they define it.”
Even in the dark, Quark could sense Ro’s dubious expression. He refused to give up without at least attempting to prove his point, so he continued, “You’re one to believe in scientific principles. What’s the law of thermodynamics that says that for every action there’s an equal and opposite reaction? Or what about the one that matter moves from a state of order to disorder? Either way, no matter where you look, nothing and nobody stays the same. You can’t have the good guys without the bad ones, and as quickly as you transform the fortunes of one backwater world, another one will be blown to hell. The Federation forgets that as quickly as you fix one problem, another one crops up. Starfleet flits about in their pretty starships, trying to make everyone happy and it’s mostly an exercise in futility. Is that what you want from your life Laren? Chasing a dream that can never be realized?”
Through dancing flames, Ro studied Quark pensively for a moment. Finally, she asked, “What’s better in life than dreams?”
“Results,” Quark spat. “You sail the Great River, you throw in your nets, you bring in your catch. I measure my successes by the latinum in my vault. Quantifiable, measurable results.”
“Latinum can’t love you.”
“Latinum can’t hurt you either,” Quark retorted sharply.
Ro sought Quark’s eyes, scrutinizing him closely. “You’re bothered about something. What?”
Commander Matthias’s words about Ferengi being easy to read came back to him. He pulled the blanket up over his ears. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Suddenly, Ro was sitting next to him, yanking the blanket back down. “Come on. You can tell me willingly or I can coerce it from you. Remember I interrogate people for a living.”
For once, bondage fantasies didn’t enter Quark’s mind. Instead, he considered what good it would serve if he talked about his feelings. He supposed if he wanted Ro to trust him, this was the moment to prove it. “Okay. Fine. I’m a little preoccupied with the Jake situation.”
“What about it?” She looked confused.
“Kira pretty much laid the whole thing at my feet the other night. And even though I know the ship I sold him was fine, I keep asking myself, ‘Am I responsible?’” There, I said it. I might have sent a trusting young man to his death by trying to make a profit off him. And not that much profit at that.He braced himself for Ro’s response.
She chuckled.
“Oh, that’s sensitive of you, Laren.
“Quark, I’ve had some of Starfleet’s best engineers review Nog’s inspection. They all concur: there was nothing to suggest there was anything structurally or systemically wrong with the ship you sold Jake. And Kira knows that.”
Quark shook his head. “You weren’t there—”
“No,” Ro agreed. “But I’d been watching her most of the evening, and even though she did a fine job of masking it, I could tell her emotions were coming to a boil. My guess is she lashed out at you for reasons that had nothing to do with Jake, or you.”
“You mean she put me through that abuse for nothing?”
Ro smiled, shook her head and rested her arm next to his. “I suppose that depends on your point of view. Probably did her a world of good to blow off some steam. And as a direct result, I just got to see your conscience working. It’s a sweet conscience, Quark. You should let it out more often.”