The laertian gamble, p.1
The Laertian Gamble, page 1
CHAPTER 1
Dr. Julian Bashir was sitting alone in the little lounge just outside of Quark's Place. The lounge wasn't part of his gambling den, but Quark served drinks there anyway, and treated it like his annex. With its com fortable chairs and small tables, it provided a quiet place in the crowded space station to sit and think.
Bashir sat with a half-finished cup of coffee in front him, playing a solitaire machine. The machine took standard Bajor coins, and Bashir had a pile of them in front of him. Julian didn't expect to win; just to pass some time. He was playing in a bored, inattentive fashion when Chief O'Brien came by.
“A good morning to you. Doctor,” O'Brien said heartily.
“Is it morning?” Julian said. “How can you tell?”
“By the clocks, of course,” O'Brien said. “And the station's lighting is set to a twenty-four-hour cycle to spare our old circadian rhythms a lot of readjust ment”
“Maybe my circadian rhythms have adjusted,” Jul ian said. “But I haven't.”
“No? I don't understand why not. You've been out here long enough.”
“For what?”
“To get used to life on-station, of course.”
“Maybe I've been out here long enough to get fed up.”
“That would be the other possibility,” O'Brien said. “What's the trouble? You look like your best girlfriend just walked out on you.”
“If only that were the case,” said Julian.
“What? I don't get it.”
“If I had a girlfriend to walk out on me,” Julian said, “at least I'd have a girlfriend. Maybe I could get her back. As it is, I don't even have a girlfriend to lose.”
“What about that cute little Bajoran student you met last week?”
“You mean Leesha, the redheaded one who came through with the tour? She was very nice indeed. But she had to go back to the university. And dating is not convenient with one of us on Bajor and the other on Deep Space Nine.”
“You'll find another.”
“But when? And how? Lately there's been a short age of females who might be of interest to a human male.”
“Of course, being a married man, I never so much as notice another woman,” O'Brien said, sarcasti cally. “But you're not so bad off, Julian. The light of your life is still here.” Bashir nodded in understanding. “It's true. I'm crazy about Dax, but I'm finally getting it through my head that it's not reciprocated. Maybe it has something to do with her having been a man. Chief. That cramps my style.”
“At least you've got your work to keep you busy.”
“Recently, not even that. Everybody's been disgust ingly healthy, and we haven't been visited lately by new species with interesting problems.”
“Yes, it is a little quiet,” O'Brien admitted. “But be thankful for it and get some rest while you can. Things always blow up again around here.”
“Hah,” Bashir said. “I'll believe it when I see it.” O'Brien slapped him on the shoulder and strolled on, whistling. He and Keiko, who was on an all-too-brief hiatus from her botanical research on Bajor, had just had an extremely pleasant breakfast together. At the end of it, he'd gotten a call from one of his assistants wanting him to look into an unexplained energy outage. It didn't sound like much, but O'Brien was grateful for it anyhow; it gave him something to keep him occupied.
He went into one of the elevators, and after punch ing the button, he thought briefly about Bashir. The doctor wasn't the sort to give up on the opposite sex for very long. No doubt someone would come along and give him a renewed interest in life. Stranger things had happened.
Bashir's mood, as he sat in the anteroom to Quark's Place, clicking two chips idly together in front of the solitaire machine, was one of self-pity aggravated by boredom.
He was wondering, not for the first time, what had possessed him to move heaven and earth to get this assignment. At the time Deep Space Nine had seemed the summit of his hopes and ambitions: not just the assignment to the station itself with its frontier loca-tion and its ever-changing population of races and species, but after the discovery of the nearby worm-hole, access to the worlds of the Gamma Quadrant. The Bajoran wormhole was the only stable one of its kind known to the peoples of the Federation. It offered a unique opportunity to explore many worlds without being stopped by tile interminable distances involved in most galactic voyages. It gave Bashir a chance to explore territory unavailable to any other human doctor, with entirely new species to look after and learn about. It even gave Bashir a chance to make a name for himself in the world of medical research. There were drawbacks, however ...
CHAPTER 2
The inner doors of Quark's Place opened. Out came Quark, and beside him, but head and shoulders taller and worlds more attractive, was a young woman. And what a woman! She had to be a newcomer, and Dr. Bashir hadn't even seen her come aboard. Now he straightened up with interest.
She was tall and slender, with a great mane of tawny hair that she kept in place with long silver pins. Her features were delicate, but there was a look of deter mination about her that saved her from mere prettiness. She would have been a standout anywhere; but here on DS9 she was like a radiant young goddess. She wore a long, pleated gown which mingled the colors of violet and ivory. She had a tunic with built-up shoul der pads. It had frogged fastenings of gold cord, but she had left it open in front. It was a costume Bashir found intriguing. He wondered if it was the national dress of some planet he didn't know about. Quark, one hand firmly on the woman's elbow, was escorting her to the door that led out to the main concourse. And the woman, while not resisting him directly, was protesting in no uncertain terms.
Something interesting seemed to be going on. Bashir decided to deal himself in. “What seems to be the trouble?” he asked. “No trouble,” Quark said, “the lady was just leaving.”
“The lady,” the woman said, “is being thrown out of this establishment by this weird-looking troglo dyte.”
“Thrown out?” said Bashir. “Why is the lady not acceptable in your gambling den. Quark? Are you afraid her good looks will distract your patrons?” Bashir was rewarded by a brief flashing smile from the young lady. Quark, however, chose to take him literally.
“The people who come to my place wouldn't care who or what sat across the table from them as long as it was capable of losing money. No, it's nothing like that. Dr. Bashir. The fact is, there's nothing personal in this at all. When she came in, this lady tripped off the anti-telepath meter. It reacts to even small con centrations of psi ability in humanoids. It's a new invention from the Rhine Institute on your planet Earth. I sent for it only recently. This lady is the first one it has caught.”
“Caught? That's a weighted word. Quark.”
“What I mean is, the lady here tripped the alarm.” Bashir shrugged. “All right, so she's got some psiability. So what?” Quark sniffed and said loftily, “As I'm sure you know, nobody with telepathic or psionic abilities is allowed to gamble at my games. That's a rule observed in most gambling places. The sign is there on the wall for everyone to see.” Bashir knew the sign. It hung just inside the door, and it read, no telepaths allowed within fifty feet OF THE TABLES.
“I have already explained to this troll,” the woman said, “that I have merely a small, latent telepathic ability of no significance. It is a telepathy shared by and limited to my species only, one that could never do me the slightest good in gambling with people of another race.”
“Sounds reasonable to me,” Bashir said. “What do you think. Quark?”
“I believe what the lady is saying,” Quark said, with every indication of sincerity, “but it's not a matter for me to decide. 'Never gamble with a telepath' is the two hundred and sixteenth Rule of Acquisi tion. I have no choice in the matter. I am as bound by the rule as she is. Otherwise I'd be happy to take her word that she can't read the minds of the other players.” Quark's face took on such an expression of regret that even Julian Bashir, who knew the little Ferengi for the greedy, cynical creature that he was, was almost inclined to believe him.
I'm afraid there's nothing anyone can do about it,” Bashir said to the young woman. “And I think we can believe Quark when he tells us it isn't personal. He doesn't care whose money he takes.”
“I still don't like it,” the woman said. “I think it's prejudice.”
“Listen, tell you what,” Bashir said. “Why don't you sit down here and have a drink with me and give yourself a chance to calm down.”
“Yes, why don't you?” said Quark, seeing an inexpensive way out of what could have turned into a nasty incident. “The doctor is buying and his credit is good. I'll bring them out myself. Wait till you try my Zombie Grasshoppers!” And Quark hurried off to get them.
CHAPTER 3
As he had arranged, O'Brien met his assistant at the central turbolift on the forward end of the Prome nade. Line Bamoe was there waiting for him, a tall, gawky young man dressed in his best dress uniform even though he had been advised to expect dirty duty and to dress accordingly.
Line was a graduate engineering student from Bajor University of Science and Art. He wanted to be a spacegoing engineer like O'Brien, had gotten assigned to an assistantship to O'Brien, and already he had learned more than he would have done in five years of regular practice on Bajor. He idolized O'Brien, tried to copy him in every way.
“Top of the morning to ya!” Line said as O'Brien came up.
O'Brien nodded. He didn't like having his Irish heritage mocked, but since Line clearly meant it a s a friendly gesture, O'Brien didn't have the heart to snap at him about it. “Are those anomalies still showing up?” he asked.
“Oh, yes, sir!” Line said. “They haven't disap peared!”
“Are you recording them?”
“Oh, yes, sir, of course!” O'Brien had been half-expecting the traces to van ish. That was the usual fate of transient phenomena on a space station. Just when you thought you were on to something, the phenomenon faded away and the instruments dipped back to normal.
This time, however, the neutrino levels displayed on Line's tricorder were disconcertingly high. There was also considerable activity in the photon band. So much for the tricorder analysis. Energy levels across the board were displaying a remarkable outpouring, as if a trunk line had been cut and its power diverted.
“You sure this instrument is accurate?” O'Brien asked. “I checked it out myself only two days ago. No trouble there at all.” O'Brien studied the tricorder screen. “You got a direction for this outpouring?”
“Yes, sir. It's coming from somewhere between the second and third levels. There's fluctuation, so I can't pinpoint it exactly.”
“I guess we'll have to go in and find it,” O'Brien said.
“Yes, sir! Ready, sir!”
“Follow me,” O'Brien said, wishing the new engineers would tone it down a little. Sometimes a simple “Okay” was better than all the “Yes, sir!'s in the world.
CHAPTER 4
Quark went inside, brought the drinks, and left again, smiling. AUura sipped her drink, and said, “I never thought about the telepath thing. It's always been such a minor part of my life.”
“You mean you didn't know you were telepathic?”
“Of course I knew. But on Laertes where I come from, everyone is mildly telepathic, so no one's got an unfair advantage. And when we're away from home, our psi ability doesn't work on non-Laertians. So here I've come all this way to your space station, and it's cost me interstellar spaceship fares that are not re fundable, to say nothing of hotel bookings that I'll have to pay for whether I use them or not. All I've gone through to get here, and now that creep of a Ferengi won't let me gamble. I mean, it's really too much.” She pouted. Bashir thought she was especially fetching when she pouted.
“Yes, it is, I can see what you mean,” Bashir said, thinking to himself that AUura was not only beautiful, she was also spirited. He could feel himself falling in love with her already.
Bashir pulled himself up short because Allura had just asked him about himself.
Her eyes widened when he told her he was one of DS9's officers, and a medical doctor. Bashir figured she could see for herself that he was attractive and sympathetic.
Then it was her turn. She spoke of Laertes, her world on the other side of the wonnhole. From what she said, Julian gathered it was an Earth-sized planet with a standard oxygen atmosphere. Beyond that, there wasn't much of interest, although the fact that it was occupied by two different but viable humanoid races was mildly interesting.
“Listen,” Julian said, two drinks later, “this is such fun, why don't we go somewhere for dinner and then take in some entertainment and just keep on going?”
“That would be great fun,” Allura said. “But there's something I need to do first.”
“Tell me what it is. Perhaps I can help.”
“Do you know the message read-out at the bottom of the main concourse?
“Of course,” Julian said. The read-out on the main concourse was a familiar feature of the ship. It was where people displayed notices for all kinds of offers to be made or received.
“Well, who do I have to see to put up a notice of my own?” Allura asked.
“I'm not quite sure,” Bashir said. “I think you can access the display from almost any terminal. But why do you want to put up a notice?”
“I want to advertise for a service,” she said.
“What service would that be?” Bashir asked.
“I want somebody to gamble for me,” Allura said. “And I'm willing to pay.”
“To gamble for you?” Bashir repeated, not sure he had quite understood.
“Since that terrible little person, Quark, won't let me gamble for myself, I'll hire someone to gamble for me. As long as this person is not a telepath. Quark can't object, can he?”
“No, I don't suppose he can,” said Bashir. “Any body with money is allowed to gamble—encouraged to, in fact.
“Good. That'll solve it.”
“Will it, really?” Bashir said. “It won't be the same as you doing it yourself.”
“No, but it'll be as close to that as I can get.”
“True. But how could that have any interest for you?”
“I will be very interested,” she said. “I believe I am a lucky person, and whoever gambles for me will have my luck. Is there anyone you can think of?” She leaned over the table toward him. Her eyes were bottomless pools of appeal. Perfumed waves emanated from her hair. Bashir felt dizzy and intoxi cated, just the way some small male spiders are said to feel just before the female devours them. Bashir had learned that in anatomy class, but he had forgotten it. It probably wouldn't have made any difference if he had remembered.
“No need to put up an ad,” Bashir said grandly. “I'll be quite happy to gamble for you myself.” She stared at him, awed. “You would do that for me? You, a doctor?”
“Sure. No problem. I won't charge you anything, either.”
“You are too generous!”
“Not at all,” Bashir chucked. “There's something in it for me. We will be able to have dinner together, and then do whatever we want afterwards.”
“Nothing would give me greater pleasure,” Allura said. “But the gambling—it isn't quite as simple as that.”
“Why not? I'll admit I'm ignorant of most games of chance, though I played a little poker in college.”
“It has nothing to do with knowing a game,” Allura said. “It's just that, if you're going to gamble for me as my representative, you and I must first have an agreement.”
“I'd love to come to an agreement with you,” Bashir said, smiling. “What sort of an agreement do you want?”
“Now, be serious! First of all, it must be understood that I will give you the money to gamble with. You will not use any of your own. Anything you lose will be from my money, and anything you win will be added to my money.”
“That seems fair enough,” Bashir said.
She leaned forward, lips moist, cleavage prominent. “And this next point is very important. If you're going to gamble for me, you must promise not to quit before either you or your opponent is wiped out.”
“You play for blood, don't you?” Bashir said, amused. “It is the only way to gamble. Do you want to drop out now?”
“Certainly not,” Bashir said. “Please continue.”
“I was saying that the game is to continue until I am broke—or until I've won everything there is to win.”
“What a curious provision,” Bashir said. “I think it makes the whole thing more exciting,” Allura told him. “I consider it very important.”
“Yes, no doubt. Well, fine, I have no objection to this. Though I warn you, from what I know of Quark's Place, I may not last too long there, no matter how much you start me with.”
“I'm not worried about that. I believe in my luck, and in the long-awaited luck of the Lampusan people, and in the mathematical evidence that that luck can be transferred to a proxy.” Later, Dr. Bashir was to remember that phrase she used: the long-awaited luck of the Lampusan people. And he was also to think of her phrase, “the mathe matical evidence that luck can be transferred to a proxy.” Right now, intent on getting on with the evening, it didn't even occur to him to ask her what she meant.
He said, “I think we've come to an agreement. Shall we get a bite to eat?”
“Yes, I'd love to,” Allura said. “But first, let's get all we've said down in writing.”
“In writing?” said Bashir.
“Of course,” Allura said. “I believe in knowing exactly what's agreed to. But if you'd really rather not...”
“I don't mind at all,” Bashir said grandly. “Actu ally, it's all rather a lark.” His cheeks were to bum later when he remembered that phrase. “Rather a lark.” Hah! No lark, but rather a stinking dead vulture. But he was to think that only later. For now it was a lark, and he was embarked on a most delightful adventure after too long a time of no fun at all.
