“In or out, Taran’atar,” Kira heard from behind as the group neared a passageway leading to the guest quarters. It was Quark’s unmistakable high-pitched voice. Ro half turned at the sound, and Kira thought she saw her cast a fond look in Quark’s direction.
“In or out, Taran’atar,” Quark shouted from the end of the bar. He might not even have noticed the Jem’Hadar, except that he had looked out into the Promenade to see the contingent of dignitaries walk by, along with Kira and Ro. And then, in the midst of a particularly salacious thought about the contours of Ro’s uniform, he saw the giant creature standing to the side of the doorway, stock-still like some giant stone slibut staring down at the Sacred Marketplace from its perch atop the Tower of Commerce.
Taran’atar glanced in Quark’s direction but did not move. Quark walked toward him, more comfortable with the gigantic, pebble-skinned humanoid since the Jem’Hadar had started buying time in the holosuites for his physical exercise. “Come on, Tarannie, I can’t have you just hovering there in the doorway. You’ll scare off the paying customers. Either in or out.”
The Jem’Hadar lumbered in and took a seat, precariously balancing his body on one of the bar stools. Morn’s stool! Quark rolled his eyes, glad for once that his best—and most talkative—customer had not yet come in for the day. He hated to think what would happen if Morn and Taran’atar got into a scuffle over the seating arrangements.
“Hey, Tarannie, you’ve just staked out Morn’s regular stool. He isn’t in yet, but you might want to know for future reference.” Taran’atar gave him a blank look.
“I did not see his name on this stool,” Taran’atar said. “I wasn’t aware that he owned it. I thought you were the owner of this establishment.”
“I do own the place. It’s just that Morn doesn’t like to sit anywhere else. You know, people have favorites.” Taran’atar continued to stare at him in evident incomprehension, so Quark decided to let the matter drop, at least until Morn arrived. “What can I get you?”
“I wish to have the same drink you made for me last time I came here. The brown and white one.”
Quark screwed up his face in distaste. “The root beer float? Ugh, I can’t figure out what hew-mons see in that stuff, much less what you get out of it.”
He nevertheless passed Taran’atar a large tankard of the frothy brown liquid, in which two lumps of vanilla ice cream floated. He watched in both wonderment and revulsion as Taran’atar lifted the noxious potion to his lips and downed it in a single swallow. After a nod from Taran’atar, Quark immediately set about filling a second tankard and handed it over.
Quark usually made it his policy never to question a client’s tastes. But as Taran’atar started in on his fourth helping, Quark found he could no longer restrain himself. “Wouldn’t you rather have a nice, slimy Slug-o-Cola instead?”
“No,” Taran’atar said, in between quaffs, “I would not.”
“Hmm. Well, you’re sucking those things down like they’re the last vials of ketracel-white in the whole quadrant.”
Taran’atar paused, apparently contemplating his rapidly expanding collection of drinking vessels. Then he fixed his hard pale eyes on Quark. “I’m one of the very few of my kind who has never required the white.”
Quark recalled the time, not so very long ago, when Dominion forces had controlled the station. Jem’Hadar soldiers could get pretty testy when their white didn’t arrive on time. But they had never ordered root beer floats. Or anything else for that matter.
“There you go, then,” Quark said. “Judging from the root beer habit my nephew Nog developed since joining Starfleet, maybe this stuff is just the Federation’s version of the white.”
“I’ve found that your root beer floats energize me. Are you telling me that this beverage also creates a chemical dependency?”
Quark wondered if he hadn’t tweaked Taran’atar’s nose a little too hard this time. Shaking his head, he said, “I’m only saying that you’re drinking like a man who has a problem.”
Taran’atar downed half of his fifth root beer float in one gulp, then turned to Quark, a foamy white mustache on his upper lip. “Perhaps I do. During my last holosuite exercise, I encountered something unexpected.”
Quark tried not to stare at the ice cream that clung to the Jem’Hadar’s upper lip. He couldn’t imagine what Taran’atar might have encountered during his holo-battles that could possibly have surprised him. Those 331ultraviolent programs he used were pretty straightforward hack-and-slay scenarios.
“What do you mean, ‘unexpected’?” Quark said, frowning. “Was there a glitch of some kind?” He hoped that Taran’atar wasn’t ramming those sharpened targ-stickers of his into the imaging hardware again. And that another one of those holoprogrammer’s “jack-in-the-box” subroutines hadn’t popped up in the combat software.
“I’m not certain. During combat, a man appeared. A human. He was dressed in black, and had silver hair. He called me ‘pallie.’”
Quark grinned. “Oh, that’s just Vic. He’s a Las Vegas entertainer.”
“Curious. He told me that the noise from my combat scenario was disturbing others in an adjacent holosuite. I didn’t think that was possible.”
Quark chuckled. “It’s not. Unless you’ve started jamming pointy things into the mechanisms again, there’s no way even you could make that much noise.”
Taran’atar looked as baffled as his inexpressive face would permit. “Then why did this Vic ask me to ‘keep the noise down to a dull roar’?”
“Vic has probably taken an interest in you, and thinks you need to unwind a bit,” Quark said with a grin.
“Unwind?”
Quark leaned toward the Jem’Hadar and whispered conspiratorially, “You probably strike Vic as a bit…tense.”
“Then he’s mistaken,” Taran’atar said, a little too quickly. “But I am curious. I thought that all holographic characters were confined to particular programs or holosuites.”
“Not this one.
