The object of Kira's fury sat blissfully unaware that his life hung by the thread of Kira's civility. Quark, the Ferengi owner of the social "hot spot" on DS9, Quark's Place, stared into the ornate, antique Ferengi treasure chest that contained his hoard of gold-pressed latinum, carefully gathered over many years selling drinks and -- other things.

Since it was a slow business day, Quark had decided to take an uncharacteristic but much-needed three-hour holiday away from business. He initiated a very special program in one of the holosuites, a program to which only he knew the code key, and sat now in a dank, moldy dungeon that smelled of centuries, gloating over his latinum.

Quark felt safer opening his treasure chest in such an environment.

Unexpectedly, a crack of light appeared in the midst of the ancient, stone wall. Quark stared. The crack widened, opening into some sort of secret door.

"That's not in the program," Quark puzzled, then realized to his horror that someone was opening the holosuite door, ignoring the occupied sign, and in a moment would actually see Quark's treasure!

The Ferengi frantically scooped the bars of gold-pressed latinum into the chest, carelessly dropping one on the ground. Before he could pick it up, Quark's timid older brother Rom poked his impossibly ugly face through the unexpected door, leering at Quark and his latinum. Quark slammed the lid on the chest, then hopped up on the wooden plank table, sitting to block Rom's view of the Ferengi artifact.

"Ah. Quark. I thought I might find you here."

"What an amazing deduction, Rom. And the only clue you had was that I told you I'd be in holosuite two. I also told you not to disturb me."

"Oh. Am I disturbing you?"

Quark rolled his eyes. Thank cash that Rom's son Nog showed rather more intelligence and promise than his father. "What is it, you irritating, earless little philanthropist?"

Rom gasped at the obscenity; flustered, he reached behind him and dragged yet another person into Quark's private fantasy: a strange, brightly lit onion with legs. "Th-th-this is Captain Square-Deal Djonreel. Says he must speak to you. Urgent. I-I-I ... "

"Should get back to the bar," finished Quark, barely containing his rage at the interruption of his holiday.

"I should get back to the bar," suggested Rom, skulking back out of view with an obsequious Ferengi cringe (number four -- the "relative's cringe").

"What do you want?" demanded Quark, then realized it could be an important client. "Sir." He made a halfhearted cringe (number one -- I cringe on general principles; now what do you want?), still irritated by Rom.

"Box," said Captain Square-Deal Djonreel. "Locks. Offer deal -- a real steal."

His chest burst open and a limb stretched forth, holding a large box marked with the seal of the Cardassian empire. Despite long years serving all the disgusting races that frequented Quark's Place, particularly the Cardassians, Quark's stomach churned as the captain's other limbs twitched and writhed in bright, orange goo. Square-Deal Djonreel was only the second Lonat that Quark had ever seen; the first time, he actually fainted, ruining one of his father's perfectly devious business deals. Quark unconsciously rubbed his bottom, remembering his father's subsequent "discussion."

Why can't everybody just look normal, like Ferengi? he thought.

Quark reached out, not leaving his perch, and took the box. It was definitely Cardassian, even older than his Ferengi treasure chest. The seal was from the Uta Dul dynasty, more than a century old, and unbroken.

The Ferengi stared greedily at the box, itself worth more than Quark's entire personal fortune, and tried to bore his vision straight through the Kuluk-metal sides to peer at the mysterious, enticing contents.

Unfortunately, a Cardassian seal was not something one could hammer open or pick with a swizzle stick. The Cardassians used "force shield" seals for their most important possessions; the seals required a precise sequence of radio-wave frequencies broadcast into them. A wrong frequency would cause the seal to detonate, destroying the box contents and possibly the face and hands of the unskilled locksmith.

Few Ferengi knew how to pick a Cardassian seal; Quark was one of those few. At least, it had seemed straightforward enough the last time he had done it.

The box was heavy. Quark gingerly shook it, hearing a satisfactory rattle of stuff. "What's in the box?" he asked, trying (without success) to sound bored and uninterested. "Um ... um ... I hope not rocks," added Quark belatedly, realizing the rhyme was forced (and lame).

Lonats always spoke in rhyme for some insane reason. They claimed that their poetry was subtle, supple, and graceful in their native language; but the Universal Translator turned it all into nursery verse. If you rhymed back at them, you often got better deals.

"Don't know. Didn't show. Sold it to me sight unseen; must be something pretty keen."

Quark looked up from the Cardassian box and noticed that the captain was staring down at the bar of gold-pressed latinum that fell when Quark scooped up the rest. "Ah ... ah, Square-Deal Djonreel," said the Ferengi, trying to distract the captain from the shiny bar. "I really can't be -- philanthropic. Don't you even know the topic?"

The Lonat glowed, finally figured out what Quark meant. "Ancient alien artifact. Probing more would lack in tact."

"I haven't much, and that's a fact. But I can offer, ah, the princely sum of two bright bars of latinum."

"Two? You villain! What a laugh. Fifty wouldn't equal half!"

"Fifty! I mean, you can't believe I'd offer fifty; you know Ferengi must be thrifty." Quark reached up, rubbed his ears while thinking. "I'll give this deal my best refinement. I'll try to sell it on consignment."

Square-Deal Djonreel pondered, alternately glowing and dimming, flapping his onionskin mouth. "Despite the pain it is to sever, I cannot dicker here forever. Consignment you shall have consent ... if we settle on percent."

Quark licked his lips, beginning to enjoy the game. "I run the risks in such a sortie. I say we split it sixty-forty."

"Forty percent? That's my cut? You take me for some kind of nut?" The captain moved closer, menacingly.

Not good, thought Quark. Djonreel would insist upon at least fifty percent.

The saving grace was that Lonats were not very good at lightning calculations ... a fact that any good Ferengi considered a perfectly acceptable bargaining tool. "All right!" said Quark. "All right! Don't start to pound. How does sixty-fifty sound?"

Square-Deal Djonreel dimmed to merely bright. Something seemed fishy, but he could not quite tell what. But even more than humans, Lonats hated more than anything to seem hesitant or uncertain in a deal.

He did the best he could. "More Ferengi bunko tricks, the ... bottom price is sixty-sixty."

Quark grinned crookedly, feeling his pointed teeth with his tongue. Tricks-the with sixty? When a Lonat resorted to such a feeble rhyme, he was severely rattled. Bracing himself, he stuck out his hand, took the captain's appendage. "Your cut of the sale will be recorded. Till you return it will be hoarded." Quark intended to take sixty percent of any sale, then give the rest to Djonreel; as the agreed split -- sixty percent to each partner -- was clearly impossible, any Ferengi court in the sector would consider Quark's interpretation close enough to pass muster.

Square-Deal Djonreel dimmed almost to the luminescence of a normal being. He was not happy with his own performance in the complicated dance of the deal. Probably expected at least some up-front latinum, thought Quark.

"And now I must depart this place," said the captain, "and head out into deepest space." He took a last, longing look at the bar of latinum beneath Quark's dangling feet, sighed a deep amber, and turned around. He stared in confusion at the dungeon wall where a door had been when he came in.

"End program," gloated Quark. No sooner had the words escaped than he found himself sitting on air instead of a fine, Ferengi jailwood table. He flailed his arms and fell heavily to the deck.

As Square-Deal Djonreel squelched through the door, Quark again rubbed his aching bottom, wondering what the mystical connection was between Lonats and that portion of his anatomy.

Constable Odo stared in utter amazement at the wall display. The wretched little Ferengi has finally done it, he thought; he's driven himself mad with his debaucheries.

Odo sat in his security office, behind the heavy but utilitarian desk, watching one of several wall displays that continuously showed parts of Deep Space 9. Odo had a standing rule: no matter who or what else was displayed, at least one screen must always be following the station's public enemy number one -- Quark.

At this moment, Quark was huddled in one of his own holosex suites, running some ghastly prison program and talking with the pumpkin-headed Lonat in the most bizarre fashion.

As the conversation proceeded, Odo briefly wondered whether he could use the weird, nursery rhyme negotiation to persuade Dr. Julian Bashir to transport Quark to a psychiatric facility on Bajor for his own protection.

Odo had just awakened from his bucket, and his brain was still a bit fuzzy as the pieces fell slowly into place.

Still, the event was weird enough, even for the disgusting Quark, that it warranted investigation. Odo stood, made sure none of his features or clothing had run, and boiled out the glass door of his office toward Quark's Place.

Unless the little hood is having me on. Was it possible the Ferengi had discovered Odo's hidden "spy-eye" in the holosuite and was trying to trick Odo into making a fool of himself?

The constable had installed the bugs when Dr. Bashir, who would not tell him why, asked him to. Before the doctor's request, Odo was so repulsed by the thought of what went on in the suites that it never occurred to him to watch.

But Bashir insisted that they be installed, muttering something paradoxical about Lieutenant Dax and Major Kira being eternally grateful, even if they never found out about it. That way, Odo could "keep an eye on things" even when not physically present, disguised as an article of furniture, a rug, or a bottle of Quark's vile spirits.

No, thought the constable; Quark may be clever, but even he wouldn't routinely sweep private holosuites for hidden bugs. After all, he was not a Cardassian.

Odo pushed into the Promenade, then turned sideways to swim through a mob lined up to play The Gokto Lottery. The constable scowled: he could not remember seeing an application from the Bajorans to run a game of chance. Have to talk to the commander about it. Or better yet, Kira.

The station was full to overflowing from the latest wave of tourist ships to the wormhole. With the tourists had come a yammer of merchants, a mummer of missionaries (all faiths), a fraud of mountebanks -- and of course a lift of pickpockets, a shiv of muggers, and a deviant of flashers, Ferengi, and other perverts.

The political turmoils sweeping Bajor had crash-landed on DS9. Every other step, Odo had to duck under a banner or dodge a sign-waving, chanting crowd of Bajoran fundamentalist or antifundamentalist (tolerationist?) protesters. The current fashion for the orthodox "Bajor for Bajorans" was dark blue, gray, and black, while the progressive faction preferred light and sky blue.

For some reason, none of the Bajorans these days liked red, but it was still a popular color among the hordes of tourists, come to gawk at both the wormhole and the riots.

The sea of sentiency made Odo squirm, longing even for the days of Cardassian rule: at least then, there was a sense of decorum, decency, and above all occasional silence.

The holding cells were jammed so full of "detainees" awaiting either trial or a one-way ticket off Deep Space 9 that three of Odo's men had a full-time job just keeping them from killing each other. The constable had already converted a cargo bay to an emergency jail, getting Chief O'Brien to divide it up with portable force shields.

Growing annoyed at the sea of intelligent and nearly intelligent beings that washed against him, Odo put his arms together and shifted them into a wedge like a "cowcatcher" on an old-fashioned Earth loco-motive, a wheeled engine that pulled cargo along a railed track. He ploughed toward Quark's, brushing the people aside.

When Odo reached the den of iniquity, he was amused to discover that Quark was not benefiting from the mobs. There were now so many merchants selling out of inexpensive pushcarts on the Promenade, with virtually no overhead, that they easily undercut Quark's prices for everything from synthehol to legal gambling. In fact, the Ferengi had recently become quite the moralist, demanding that Odo, Kira, or Sisko himself "do something" about such disgusting, wide-open marketeering on the Promenade.

Even Quark's notorious holosex suites ran mostly empty, since most of the worlds represented on DS9 these days had sexual needs so pedestrian and boring that they would never dream of paying for an elaborate, sexual holodeck program.

Quark's Place was a huge, three-story facility, the largest private operation on DS9. Where the "exterior" of the Promenade was banners and bunting, the constant rumble of the rabble, beggars, miners, and assorted nuts inside Quark's was a completely different universe: the casino had fewer of the dregs of the sector but was, if anything, more sleazy, dangerous, and illicit than the Promenade itself.

The bar was stuffed floor to ceiling with glitzy, flashing lights, the well-dressed, and thousands of kilos of ersatz jewels -- though Quark would have hotly disputed the adjective.

Any of the hoi polloi who wandered in were subtly steered toward a Dabo table in the corner, away from the "pressed and groomed" crowd in the rest of the club. There were so many colors visible at any one time, it often hurt Odo's eyes, used as he was to more spartan ways. The most exotic colors, of course, were the syntheholic (and supposedly alcoholic, though Odo had never caught the Ferengi) drinks mixed by Quark himself, with occasional help from Rom.

Quark bragged that anybody could get anything in Quark's Place; the gnomelike Ferengi was not amused when Odo agreed, naming a number of exotic, sexually transmitted diseases. "My holosex suites are the cleanest in this sector!" raged Quark, growing redder by the second.

Odo entered Quark's place just in time to see the Ferengi scuttle from the holosuite, down the stairs, toward his safe, the Cardassian box tucked securely under one arm.

"Good evening, Quark," said Odo, making himself curl his mouth up in what he hoped was a menacing smile. "What have you got there? More bars of latinum? Brekkian narcotics? Stolen cultural artifacts?"

Quark started and glared suspiciously at Odo. "Never mind what I have here. My business is my own. Something I can do for you, Odo? Would you like a nice holosex session with a Ferengi harem?" His own grin was more of a leer.

Odo straightened, then increased the effect by making himself several centimeters taller. "I've no interest in your disgusting perversions, Quark. But I do have a legitimate interest in sealed, Cardassian boxes that might contain anything -- such as a new plague virus or explosive device."

Quark twisted his body around to conceal the box. "What makes you think it's a sealed, Cardassian box?" he demanded, suspicious.

"The Cardassian seal around it."

Quark peeked down at it. "Oh. So I see. Well, I'll be sure to tell you what was in it. Now goodbye."

"Quark, I understand you caring nothing for your own continued existence, since nobody else does. But we do care about the safety of this station ... and you are not going to open that box without complete scans first. Conducted by Chief O'Brien and Dr. Bashir."

"But -- but then everybody will know what's in it!"

"Oh dear, you mean you might have to actually sell it honestly, with full disclosure? Yes, I do see where that would be a problem."

"Odo, thank goodness. Don't scare me like that! For a moment, I thought --"

Quicker than even the greedy Ferengi could move, Odo stretched his arms out like grappling hooks, seized the box, and wrenched it from Quark's hands.

"Thief! I'll have you arrested and locked in your own cells, Odo!"

"Stop whining, Quark. You'll get your precious box back, just as soon as O'Brien and Bashir assure me it poses no danger to the station." He turned toward the door, took three steps, and felt the Ferengi breathing on his back.

Odo stopped suddenly, and Quark ran into him. "And where are you going?"

"If you think I'm going to allow a shapeshifter to handle my property without watching him every step of the way, then you must think I'm a credulous cretin." Odo opened his mouth, but before he could speak, Quark interrupted. "Don't even think it! You're in enough trouble, lifting other people's perfectly legitimate property, without adding slander to your crimes."