"Because I supplied a lot of their equipment," Offenhouse said, his voice thick with self-disgust. "Electron microscopes, computers, drugs, chemicals, name it. Everything they wanted, and no questions asked, not even when I had to break export regulations and smuggling laws. They couldn't have done it without me. I'm as much Khan Singh's G.o.dfather as anyone."

No wonder Counselor Troi sensed guilt in him, Picard thought. "You couldn't have known what they planned," he said. "You were no scientist. Even if you had known what to ask-"

Offenhouse shook his head. "I didn't want to ask. I knew something was fishy, but I was making too much money to care. If I'd reported them to Interpol-well, I didn't. My son paid the price. So did the world. And what happened to me? I died rich, and I died right before I had to face the consequences. Then I got a second chance at life, an important job, respect-when I deserve to burn in h.e.l.l." He sighed. "You people should have left me where you found me-dead and lost."

"You made a mistake," Picard said. "We've all done that-"

"You've never done anything as big as this," Offenhouse told him.

"My conscience doesn't take a tape measure to my errors," the captain replied. "It only asks me what I will do to make amends."

"I've been looking for a way to do that, Picard," he said. "Ever since I talked to your counselor. Maybe even before that-sometimes I don't understand what's going on inside my head. Only, what can I do to make up for bringing the Khans into the world? Nothing is enough-"

Offenhouse stopped speaking at the sound of voices outside the hut. Picard listened intently, but without his Universal Translator he could extract no sense from the words.

The door opened and Odovil Pardi, the woman with whom Picard had talked at the castle, entered the hut. She wore an ugly gray coverall in place of the dress she had sported earlier. Odovil was unarmed, but the large man who stood in the doorway carried a scimitar, which compensated for that. The woman approached Picard and said something in her own language; her nervous voice had a questioning tone.

Picard sighed. "I'm afraid I don't understand."

Odovil frowned, then drew a folded paper and a pencil from her coverall pocket. She sketched something on the paper and showed it to the humans. "Meh-gah-rah," she said carefully. "Feh-ren-gee."

Picard looked at the sketch. It showed two stellar systems, one accompanied by a crude human face and one by a Ferengi. Is she asking us to choose sides? Picard wondered as Odovil handed him the pencil. She and the guard were giving him some intense looks... .

Offenhouse took matters into his own hands. "Ferengi!" he said emphatically, drawing a thumb across his throat.

That brought a smile to Odovil's face. "Ferengi!" she repeated, and matched the throat-slashing gesture. She looked at Picard and waited.

I hope I'm not cutting my own throat, Picard thought as he pulled a thumb across his throat. "Ferengi!"

That made Odovil smile again. "See, Picard?" Offenhouse asked cheerily. "It pays to speak a second language!"

Neanderthal? Picard wondered, looking at the paper. There was a good deal of open s.p.a.ce on it, and that gave him an idea. He took the paper and borrowed Odovil's pencil. He sketched a dozen stellar systems, then drew the heads of a human, a Vulcan and a Zhuik, whom the woman might have heard described in the away teams.

The amba.s.sador looked over his shoulder as he sketched. "Not bad," he said in admiration.

"Art is a mandatory Academy subject," Picard said. "I hope to convey the idea that the Federation is larger and more powerful than the Ferengi. And-" He added a Klingon head. "-if I know Commander Riker, he'll send Worf to look for us. Let's make sure she knows he's a friend."

"Good idea," Offenhouse said. "Add a few more people, Picard."

Picard drew a Tellarite and a Saurian before the pencil became too blunt for use. "Federation," he told Odovil, pointing to his sketch.

"Federation," she repeated, looking at the paper. She seemed impressed by the Federation's implied size. Odovil took the paper from Picard, then fished a second sc.r.a.p of paper from her pocket. She showed it to Offenhouse and Picard.

The amba.s.sador peered at it. "That's money," he said.

"I believe you're correct," Picard agreed. He watched Odovil move the currency back and forth across the sketch, between Megara and the Federation. "Trade," he said as Odovil gave him an inquiring look. "Mr. Amba.s.sador, I believe she wants to do business."

"Well, now," Offenhouse said, smacking his lips. "Things are finally looking up."

Data had programmed himself to understand Ulathic, the local Megaran language, before he left the Enterprise. This was more efficient than using a Universal Translator, a device that his creator had incorporated into his circuitry. The translator had several limitations: it could not always distinguish the subtle differences among words of similar meanings, and such vital features as idioms and emotional overtones were lost in the translation process. It could only handle one voice channel at a time, and two or more speakers could overload the device.

Anit led Data and Worf through a string of narrow, twisted alleys. Most of the buildings that ab.u.t.ted the alleys were brick, but their doors were thin and their windows were gla.s.sless holes covered only by shutters. As he walked along, his sensitive ears picked up a string of conversation fragments, one after the other. The topics seemed appropriate to the early-morning activities of diurnal creatures: the rousing of late sleepers, the preparing and eating of breakfasts, dressing, the saying of farewells for the day. In this respect the Megarans seemed no different from humanoids throughout the galaxy.

Data also heard references to yesterday's riots. The statements blamed the disturbances on the Ferengi, who on several occasions were identified by a word that meant "outworlders." The word was related to a term that meant "demons," a point he would have missed if he had relied on a translator.

Data did not like the implication. It appears that the Megarans view "Ferengi," "alien," and "evil" as identical concepts, he thought. This is unfortunate, but it could explain why our crew members were attacked. Their language forces the Megarans to regard all aliens as enemies. At least none of the voices had a high emotional loading, which suggested that the local population had grown calm. A second riot seemed unlikely.

The trio walked down an alley that finally opened into a crowded public square. "Dung on this I hurl," Anit said to Worf and Data. "Empty in the morning often this place is."

Worf growled inside his robe's hood. "There is trouble?"

"Here trouble quickly could grow," Anit said. "The Prophet Against the Dark here speaks."

"We this crowd must go around?" Data asked. He believed he understood the Ulathic syntax; as with Russian and Latin, proper grammar put the verb at the end of the sentence. Placement of subjects and objects seemed to depend upon poetic requirements of scansion and meter, with suffixes to differentiate among the cases.

"Correct you are," Anit said. He scowled at the knot of people who blocked the alley mouth. Data noted that several of the people wore alt-robes, while one man wore a garment similar to a toga. All others dressed in gray coveralls.

"The crowd a problem is not," Anit said at last. "Trouble I expect, if you the Prophet should see. Outworlders accursed you are."

"We are enemies of the rateyes," Worf said, his voice sour with irony. "Perhaps the Prophet will forgive us for that."

"Perhaps," Anit said. "The edge of the crowd behind we shall circle. Caution we must exercise. Come."

The square was a sea of heads and a murmur of voices. There was little s.p.a.ce between the crowd and the line of shopfronts, and it took a quarter of an hour for the three men to make their way to the next alley entrance. During this time Data tried to observe the Prophet. At first he heard only the voice, loud and strident, which he a.n.a.lyzed as having a seventy-five percent probability of being female and a ninetynine-point-three percent probability (approaching certainty) of being artificial. This was such an unusual observation that Data stopped, found a ledge mounted in a wall and climbed onto it.

The precarious perch let him observe the Prophet. She stood in the center of the square, her arms upraised and her hood thrown back to expose a head of long, straight gray hair. During the five seconds in which Data remained on the ledge, he adjusted his optical sensors several times. The Prophet was not entirely opaque to visible light; she transmitted approximately one ten-thousandth of the ambient light that fell upon her, making her translucent to Data's enhanced vision. In addition, she was invisible when viewed in the infrared and ultraviolet portions of the spectrum. Her gaze turned toward Data, but she did not react to his presence.

Remarkable, Data thought as he hopped off the ledge. The Prophet is a hologram.

He hurried after the others, who had not noticed his absence. Anit and Worf turned down another alley, and Data followed them. He had traveled approximately ten meters when a small, solid object impacted between his shoulder blades. He estimated that the blow would have caused severe injury in a human.

"Outworlder!" Data turned around at the shout. A trio of young Megaran males stood in the opening of the alley. One hurled a cobblestone, which Data easily ducked. They ran down the alley toward Data, and two of them brandished knives. "Outworlder, demon, monster!" they shouted.

"Get down!" Worf roared, while Anit cursed. Data a.s.sumed that Worf was giving him an order appropriate to the situation. He rapidly lowered himself to the ground and lay in a facedown posture, after which he heard the shriek of a phaser set for heavy stun. Data raised his head and saw his three a.s.sailants fall to the alley's muddy surface.

Worf and Anit were already running down the alley. Data found this a well-advised action; he ran after them. They slowed only after they had rounded a corner. "Alive we remain," Anit gasped. "Followed we are not."

"Indeed." Worf glowered at Data from inside his hood. "We must exercise more caution, Commander, not less."

"I shall endeavor to do so," Data said. The Megarans' xenophobic reaction had surprised him. Anit seemed a reasonable being, and Data saw how that had led him to discount the experience of the other crew members. He reminded himself that Anit had an economic interest in helping the aliens, while the other Megarans saw outworlders as a threat.

Anit found a doorway and knocked at it. After a moment it opened and the trio entered a brick-walled room that reminded Data of Anit's dwelling-place. There were straw pallets, a crude table and a small fire pit, where embers now smoldered.

A man in gray coveralls greeted Anit. "My old captain!" he exclaimed, hugging him with two sound arms. "We not often enough one another see. Old days we must discuss."

"Gold we must discuss, Sergeant Taygar," Anit said, throwing back his hood. "And blood of rateyes. Still much rat-eye blood you would shed?"

"Much and much," Taygar said. The young man's eyes gleamed, then turned on Worf and Data. "With them?" Data heard the suspicion in his voice.

"Reliable they are," Anit said. "They the rateyes with a pa.s.sion hate, and they with gold pay. The old company you can find?"

"I can," Taygar said. "Today no work is. Closed the factories are, and the power grid in a tangle lies. The company by noon here you will see. But who your friends are?"

"Good outworlders," Anit said. "Outworlders who the rateyes hate. Worf, Data, your faces my sergeant must see."

"Certainly," Data said, and pulled his hood back. He noted that Taygar did not appear disturbed by the alien faces. This implied that his xenophobia was not deeply rooted.

Anit nodded at them. "Rateyes they are not, Taygar. Soldiers for them we can be, honor we can have."

"Honor again," Taygar said. "But what if us they betray?"

Anit shrugged, a gesture made lopsided by his missing arm. "Then as betrayed soldiers we die. Or forever you as a rat-eye slave would live?"

"Good your question is," Taygar admitted. He looked Worf over, then pointed at his mace. "That you can use?"

"Easily," Worf rumbled. "How many men can you summon?"

"Two handfuls," the sergeant said. "Good men, good weapons."

Worf grunted in approval, then reached into his robe. "Good soldiers deserve good gold," he said, and handed his money pouch to Taygar. "Bring them and we will talk battle."

Taygar opened the bag and stared into it. For a moment he seemed transfixed by the coins. Then Anit nudged him. "More they will give," Anit said. "Much more."

Taygar left, and Anit sat down in the room's only chair. "Not all our men now I would trust," he said, "but so long as the gold lasts, they last."

"We have much gold," Worf said. He carefully turned off his Universal Translator, turned to Data and spoke in Klingonese. "I heard the Prophet speak. Her words were sweet with hate, but she did not sing like a native."

Data reviewed the Prophet's speech, then answered in the same tongue. "Yes, her syntax was wrong. I also noted that the Prophet was a hologram."

Worf looked puzzled. "A mere seeming?"

"Correct. I cannot explain why the Ferengi desire to create rage, but they are doing so."

Anit watched impatiently as Worf and Data spoke a language he could not understand. "Of what you do speak?" he asked.

Worf dodged the truth as he reactivated his translator. "We wonder how you will find our captain."

The Megaran rubbed his chin. "No details I have. Where last he was seen?"

"In the castle of the Vo Gatyn," Worf said. "We believe he escaped into the woods north of the castle, but if he did, he has not contacted us."

"Fregav Woods," Anit murmured. "Much thought must I give."

"Give, then," Worf suggested.

Data had his own thoughts. In Ulathic, "good outworlders" was almost a contradiction in terms, yet Anit had used the words and Taygar had accepted them without hesitation. It appeared that these people had a great deal of mental flexibility. Yet they do not always exercise it, he thought, reflecting on the attack. That did not bode well for the future.

I could use more sleep, Wesley thought as he studied the helm display. He'd grabbed a few hours of down-time during the night, but he didn't feel fully operational. Well, he'd gone into final exams at the Academy with no sleep, and that hadn't hurt his performance.

A light blinked on his display. "Sir, the Ferengi ship is hailing us," Wesley told Commander Riker.

"Ignore them," Riker said. "We'll talk when I am ready. And keep trying that neutrino detector."

"Yes, sir." Wesley returned his attention to his instruments. A short while later, Shrev came onto the bridge and joined Wesley at the helm. "I am extremely pleased to see you are well," Wesley whispered to her.

Her chuckle sounded like the rustle of dry leaves. "I am equally pleased to be well," the Zhuik said. "Your estimable mother is satisfied with my recovery. Could I now trouble you to inform me on the situation?"

Wesley did so, quickly, and Shrev shook her head when he described how Worf had ordered him to return to the Enterprise. "This seems a waste of a talented junior officer," Shrev said. "Did Lieutenant Worf explain this decision?"

"Mr. Worf never explains orders," Wesley said, although he thought he could guess Worf's reasons. Wesley was inexperienced in this sort of operation-and there was the incident at the Academy. Worf had never said so, but he had to feel displeased by Wesley's soiled honor.

Wesley shrugged off his thoughts. "I've been doing what I can up here," he told Shrev, "looking at our sensor readings."

"That is a useful function," Shrev said. "Have you found anything yet?"

"I don't know," Wesley said. He keyed in one of the records and put it on the helm display. White dots drifted around the screen; the display was speeded up at a rate of fifty to one. "Here's a record of the activity outside the castle, starting an hour after our last contact with the captain. The searchers are circling in the woods, all except this one group of six or seven people. We don't know what to make of them."

"Travelers, perhaps," Shrev said. She studied the display. "How odd. I intend no slight, but for humans all of these people move quickly in the dark, as though it does not handicap them."

"The Ferengi or Carda.s.sians must have given them infrared viewers," Wesley said.

"Including these travelers?" she wondered.

"They were probably following a road," Wesley said. "That would have made travel easier ... wait. It was still dark for them. They weren't carrying lights or torches or anything; we'd have spotted that. So how could they have seen the road?"

"Unusual acts bear investigation," Shrev said. Her antennae twitched eagerly. "Let us see which flowers line this road."

"Good idea," Wesley said. He turned on the mapping sensors.

Chapter Twelve.

UBINEW LOOKED up from his console in the command room. "The Fatal Arrow will arrive in four hours," the Carda.s.sian intelligence officer told Verden. "The ship is maneuvering to keep itself on a line between the neutron stars and the Enterprise."

That pleased Verden. The binary neutron star's radiation would mask the Fatal Arrow's approach, if the commander kept his vessel precisely between the star and the Federation craft. "What of the Federation ship?" Verden asked.

"Agents have beamed down from the Enterprise into the city. We are keeping tensions high in the city, to hamper their activities. Chudak is back on his ship and attempting to communicate with the human vessel."

" 'Attempting'?" Verden repeated.

"The Enterprise has not yet responded," Ubinew told his commander. "My estimate is that they desire to annoy the Ferengi by delaying their response."

"That is typical human behavior," Verden said. "Inform me when they open communications."