"When nothing goes as planned, the world is in balance." It was an old Trill saying, and Curzon Dax found it circling through his mind every thirty seconds or so, like an annoying insect that couldn't be chased away. Though the mantra didn't accurately reflect his high hopes for the Korvat peace conference, by midway through the first day he had to concede that it was apropos.

Excelsior's security team had been astonishingly thorough—far too thorough for the Klingons who found the whole screening process invasive and the facilities here at the Korvat colony far too clean for their unrefined sensibilities—and that had delayed the start of the talks for almost two hours. Even the calming influence of Ambassador Sarek had succeeded only in making the delays tolerable rather than "merely" maddening for the Klingons.

Once the talks started, the posturing of the Klingons was almost Shakespearean in nature—Curzon was familiar with the old Earth playwright's work largely through the memories of Emony—especially that of Ambassador Kamarag, who was backed not only by a support team of junior ambassadors, but also by a trio of cocky warrior captains named Koloth, Kang, and Kor. Kamarag's voice rang loudly in the diplomatic hall, in bellicose contrast to Sarek's solidly emotionless and subdued tones.

Dax knew that Sarek was a brilliant and enormously experienced diplomat, but he wondered just how well he understood the real cultural values of the Klingon Empire. Dax had little doubt that if even half of the boastful bluster that Kamarag had been spouting all day could be bagged and shipped, it could transform even the most barren Vulcan desert into a galactic agricultural marvel. Nevertheless, he also understood something of the substance behind the boasts; because he had made a careful study of Klingon society and biology during his undergraduate years, Dax suspected that he might understand its subtleties better than anyone present who had not actually been born on Qo'noS, Sarek included.

Dax had noticed immediately that Kor and Kang had the smooth foreheads that labeled them as QuchHa'; their presence here today, and their influential positions as the captains of Klingon warships, meant that despite their culturally undesirable — and fully visible — genetic aberrations, they had clawed their way to the top. By contrast, Kamarag and Koloth and nearly all the other Klingons present possessed the more traditional textured HemQuch forehead. But Koloth, Dax had learned, hadn't been born with his HemQuch features, having acquired them later in life, after he had already achieved a captaincy, presumably in defiance of the same ingrained prejudices that Kang and Kor had had to overcome.