Star Trek: The Q Continuum (9 page)

“Moi?”
The interloper in the Starfleet uniform was the very picture of astonished innocence.

“Vous,”
Picard insisted, making himself perfectly clear. “Are you responsible for the excess tachyons?”

“Please,” Q said, dismissing the notion with a wave of his hand, “I haven’t played with tachyons since I was smaller than dear little q. They’re far too slow-moving to occupy a mature Q’s attention.”

“I think you protest a bit too much,” Picard said. He remained unconvinced by Q’s denials. He knew from experience just how devious Q could be. Why, this very creature had once tried to convince him that Guinan was a deadly threat to the
Enterprise.
What was that name again that Vash had told him that Q had acquired in the Gamma Quadrant? Oh yes, “The God of Lies.”
A more than suitable description,
he thought.

Q pursed his lips in mock amazement. “Ooh, a graceful allusion to the mawkish scribblings of a preindustrial mammal. Was that supposed to impress me?” He stared balefully at the captain with a trace of genuine menace in his tone. “Cross my heart, Picard, neither me nor mine have sicced these zippy little particles on you and your ship. You’ll have to look elsewhere for the answer to that particular conundrum.”

Q vacated the bridge as abruptly as he had arrived, leaving Picard with the unsettling realization that, for once, he actually believed Q was telling the truth.

About the tachyons, at least.

“Please state the nature of the medical emergency.”

Beverly Crusher was working in her office, checking the crew manifest against the annual vaccination schedule for Rigelian fever while half-listening to the musical score of the new Centauran production of
West Side Story,
when she heard the holographic doctor’s voice.
Who the devil turned that thing on?
she wondered. Although she liked to think of herself as open to new ideas and equipment, she still had her doubts about this particular innovation. While the program’s medical expertise seemed competent enough, its bedside manner left a lot to be desired.

She found the hologram standing in Ward One, beside a row of empty biobeds. She had given Nurse Ogawa the day off, barring further emergencies. Thankfully, there were currently no casualties recuperating in sickbay. “I’m sorry,” he said, more snippishly than Beverly liked, “please rephrase your request.”

At first, she couldn’t see who he was speaking to. Then she stepped to one side and lowered her gaze. “Yum-yum?” asked the baby q, to the utter bafflement of the emergency medical program. Beverly couldn’t help wondering how the child had managed to activate the program in the first place.

“I’m sorry,” he replied, “but I am afraid I am not programmed to dispense…yum-yums.”

“End program,” Beverly said with a smirk, feeling more than a little reassured regarding her job security. The hologram vanished as quickly as a Q, and she knelt down to look the child in the face. He wore a miniature version of the Starfleet uniform his father often adopted. “Hello there,” she said warmly. “Come for another treat, have we?”

“Yum-yum,” he repeated, his current vocabulary less infinite than his potential. He held out a small, pudgy hand.

“Come on,” she said, standing up and taking him by the hand. “I think I can take care of this.” She led him around the corner to the ship’s pediatric unit, which featured a row of smaller biobeds as well as a state-of-the-art intensive care incubator in the center of the facility, beneath an overhead sensor cluster. The room was as deserted as the adult ward. Although no children resided permanently on the
Enterprise
-E, as they had on the previous ship, the pediatric unit was kept ready for any injured youngsters brought aboard during rescue and evacuation efforts; only a few weeks ago, the facility had been filled with the pint-sized survivors of a deadly radiation storm on Arcadia VI. Thankfully, Beverly recalled, all those children had been safely delivered to relatives on Deep Space Seven. The small q did not appear particularly dangerous, but she was glad she didn’t have to worry about any underage bystanders during this encounter.

She kept a supply of replicated lollipops in a container in one of the equipment cupboards. Fishing a bright blue sucker from her depleted stock, she offered it toq. “How’s this?” she asked. “Do you like uttaberry?”

“Yum!” he said gleefully, popping the candy into his mouth. It occurred to Beverly that q could probably wish his own lollipops into existence, in whatever flavor and quantity he desired, but who knew how the mind of a baby superbeing worked?
Probably just as well that he associates me with sweets,
she thought,
and not castor oil.

She looked q over; had he been truly as human as he appeared, she would have guessed that he was eighteen to twenty-four months old, but how did one estimate the age of a Q? For all she knew, this harmless-looking toddler could be as old as the pyramids. “So how old are you?” she asked aloud. “One century? Two?”

“Actually, he’s only been alive for a couple of your standard years,” a voice volunteered from behind her.

Beverly jumped forward and clutched her chest, then spun around to face the female Q, who had just appeared in the nursery.

Something to remember,
she told herself.
When the child is present, the mother is never very far away.
The Q’s outfit was identical to the doctor’s, right down to an exact duplicate of Beverly’s favorite blue lab coat.
When in Rome, I guess,
Beverly thought. She waited for a second to steady her breathing, then addressed the woman. “You have to give people a little more warning before popping in like that,” she advised. “It’s not good for our hearts.”

“Really?” the woman said. “I seem to have improved your circulation.”

In the best interests of diplomacy, Beverly refrained from comment. “Can I help you?” Beverly asked the female Q. She found it hard to think of her as just Q, although it was probably technically correct to do so; that “name” was all too vividly linked in her mind to another face. Why couldn’t this female entity just make life easier for them all and pick another letter in the alphabet?

The Q did not answer her immediately, preferring to stroll around the nursery, running a languid hand over the contours of the small beds and occasionally peeking into the cupboards. The child trailed after her, sucking away at his uttaberry lollipop. “You appear to have a distinct talent for handling small children,” she commented to Beverly. The incubator caught her attention and she contemplated it for several seconds, looking quite lost in thought. “Are there many children aboard this vessel?” she asked finally.

“Not at present,” Beverly answered. She rather missed the children who had helped populate the old
Enterprise;
it had been a point of pride that she’d known all of them by name.

The female Q drew the little boy nearer and patted him lovingly on his tousled head. “My own son is quite unique: the first child born to the Continuum since we transcended physicality untold aeons ago.”

Beverly thought that over for a moment. “What about Amanda Rogers?” she asked, recalling the young Starfleet officer who had discovered that she was actually a Q. “She was born on Earth only a few decades back.”

The woman sniffed disdainfully. “That creature was conceived in a primitive, strictly humanoid fashion.” She shuddered at the very thought.

Don’t knock it if you haven’t tried it,
Beverly thought, but kept her remark to herself. Still, the Q gave her a peculiar look, as if well aware of Beverly’s unspoken sentiments.

If she was, however, she chose to ignore them. “I’ve observed the individual you mentioned,” the Q conceded. “It’s a wonder she has any gifts at all, given her atrocious origins. I suppose, however, that the poor creature should not be blamed for the sordid activities of her notorious progenitors. She’s more to be pitied, really. It was quite magnanimous of Q to take her under his wing the way he did.”

He threatened to kill her,
Beverly recalled, wondering if the Q could read that in her mind as well.
Maybe it would be best to change the subject.
“Your son is quite charming,” Beverly said. “You must be very proud of him.” That certainly seemed like safe ground, she judged. Q or not, few mothers could object to praise of their child.

“He is the future of the Continuum,” the female Q stated matter-of-factly. “The first of an entirely new generation of immortals. A true mingling of two divine essences, a future messiah, quite unlike that ignorant urchin you called Amanda Rogers.”

Better not let Professor Faal hear you talking like that,
Beverly thought. The Betazoid scientist had seemed all too fascinated by the Q child to begin with. She could readily imagine his interest in a genuine “future messiah.” He’d probably want to ship the baby straight to his lab on Betazed.
Somehow I don’t think his mother would approve of that kind of attention.

The female Q gazed down at the child, who was content to suck quietly on his treat by his mother’s side. Her eyes narrowed and she chewed upon her lower lip as if troubled. “I confess I find the responsibility of motherhood rather…daunting.”

A-ha,
Beverly thought.
Now I get it. Faced with the ancient concept of parenting, which no Q has reckoned with for millions of years, why not come to us humble primitives for our crude but simple wisdom?
She wondered whose idea it really was to drop in on sickbay, the child’s or the mother’s?

“Don’t we all,” she confided sympathetically. She couldn’t blame the Q for her worries. Every new mother had doubts about her ability to cope with raising a child; how much harder it must be when you’re the first of your kind to face that prospect since the dawn of time. Beverly had trouble imagining the devious Q as an innocent Adam—he struck her as more the serpent type—but her heart went out to this nervous new Eve.

She circled around the incubator and took the Q by the hand. The woman flinched at the intimacy, but did not draw away. “You seem to be doing fine,” Beverly said. “I know it’s scary, but millions of mothers have faced the same challenges and survived. The trick is learning when to say no and when to let them learn from their own mistakes.”

“Exactly!” the Q responded, acting amazed and grateful that another living creature understood what she was going through. “Little q has all the power of a Q, but he doesn’t know how to use it responsibly.”
Like father, like son,
Beverly thought. “I know he needs to explore his potential, but I’m afraid to let him out of my sight for a fraction of a nanosecond.”

“You’ll get by somehow,” she promised. “Just remember to enjoy this time while you have it. I’ll tell you the honest truth: the hardest part of having children is letting them go when they’re grown. Of course, for all I know, you might not have to worry about that for millions of years.”

“Only millions?” the Q said, apparently sincerely. She tugged q nearer to her, sounding both sad and surprisingly human.

“You’ll be amazed how fast the time will fly,” Beverly cautioned. Part of her still thought of Wesley as the fragile, acutely vulnerable infant she and Jack had brought home so many years ago. “Don’t let this time slip by you without taking a moment every now and then to savor the experience. You might tell his father the same thing,” she added, feeling generous toward Q for possibly the first time in her life.
Imagine having Q for a dad,
she thought.
The poor kid.

She hoped he’d take after his mother instead.

“Thank you for your time,” the woman said. Beverly tried to remember whether the other Q had ever thanked anyone for anything. The Q squeezed her hand once, then released it. “You know, my darling q’s godmother is one of your kind.”

A Q with a human godmother?
Beverly was intrigued. “And who would that be?”

“Let me see,” the woman began, her gaze turning inward as she combed her memory for this apparently insignificant piece of trivia, “I think her name was—”

Two hours, forty minutes, and only Data knew how many seconds after the
Enterprise
came within sight of the galaxy’s edge, Professor Faal and Geordi prepared to launch the sensor probe into the barrier. Although Data had reduced the magnification on the main viewer by several orders of magnitude, the energy barrier filled the screen, bathing everyone on the bridge in its ineffable radiance.
There’s something almost mystical about it,
thought Picard, who usually resisted superstitious impulses. He felt much as Moses must have felt when he first beheld the burning bush, or when Kahless drew the original
bat’leth
from the lake of fire.

“Are we far enough away for safety’s sake?” he asked. The barrier looked as if it could sweep over them in a matter of minutes, like the largest tsunami in the galaxy.

“I believe so, Captain,” Data reported. “As predicted, the barrier yields no harmful radiation or gravitational disturbances. The surrounding space is not affected by the barrier at this distance.”

“No evidence of hostile action,” Leyoro conceded, looking only a trifle disappointed. “Deflectors at minimum strength.”

“No unusual stresses on the hull,” Geordi concluded. He looked up in amazement from the engineering monitors to confirm that there actually was a glowing barrier looming before them. “It’s like the crazy thing isn’t really there.”

“Oh, it’s most definitely there,” Faal whispered avidly, “and more real than any of us has ever been.” Turning away from Geordi’s monitors, he looked over at Picard, his eyes aglow with anticipation. Picard noticed that he was breathing heavily. “Don’t worry, Captain, my artificial wormhole will carve us a safe passage through the barrier, have no fear.”

His voice had a fervid tinge that worried Picard. The captain regarded Deanna Troi, who was watching Faal carefully with an apprehensive eye. Faal’s outburst during Q’s recent visit had given new life to her earlier concerns about the dying scientist’s emotional state. Picard frowned, uneasy even though everything seemed to be under control. “How are we doing, Mr. La Forge?” he asked.

“As well as can be expected,” Geordi said, his fingers tapping upon the remote controls. Faal, standing behind Geordi, inspected his every move. “The probe should give us the most up-to-date information possible on wave amplitudes within the barrier so we can adjust the shields on the torpedo appropriately. If everything checks out, we should be able to launch the torpedo itself within a few hours.” He paused to wipe the sweat from his forehead. “Those tachyon emissions aren’t making anything easier, but I think we can work around them.”

“There is no question,” Faal emphasized, his voice hoarse and strained. Picard was not surprised to see Faal resort to his hypospray once more. Was it only his imagination or was Faal requiring his medication ever more often? “We will make it work,” Faal wheezed, “no matter what.”

Geordi wandered over to the primary aft science stations, consulting the displays there. “La Forge to Engineering,” he said, tapping his combadge. “Begin rerouting the preignition plasma from the impulse deck to the auxiliary intake. We’re going to need that extra power to generate the subspace matrix later on.” He placed his hands on the control panel. “Permission to launch the probe, Captain?”

Picard held up his hand to delay Geordi. “Just a minute, Mr. La Forge,” he said. A nagging concern preyed on his mind. “Mr. Data, has the tachyon barrage continued to accelerate?”

“Slowly but surely,” the android affirmed.

“Have you formed any theory concerning the source of the emissions?” Picard asked. The inexplicable nature of the tachyon surge troubled him to a degree. Launching a simple probe was hardly a risky matter, but he disliked doing so while any scientific irregularities remained unaccounted for.

“Some intriguing possibilities have presented themselves,” Data stated, “but I am reluctant to venture a hypothesis on such minimal evidence.”

“Do so anyway, Mr. Data,” Picard instructed, hoping that the resourceful android could cast some light on the mystery. A tenuous explanation was better than none at all. “Which of your working theories presents a cause for concern?”

“An interesting question, sir.” Data cocked his head as he considered the issue. “You may find one hypothesis particularly intriguing, although I must emphasize that the evidence supports approximately 75.823 other interpretations.”

“Your caveats are duly noted,” Picard said. “Go on, Mr. Data.”

“Very well, Captain.” He manipulated the controls beneath his fingers at superhuman speed, summoning up the relevant information. “Although profoundly weaker in intensity, these persistent emissions are gradually coming to resemble the tachyon probe used by the Calamarain to scan the
Enterprise
on stardate 43539.1.”

“The Calamarain?” Riker said, echoing Picard’s own reaction as he recalled a cloud of energetic plasma, as large as the
Enterprise
-D or bigger, that had seemed to house a community of gaseous beings possessed of remarkable power. The
Enterprise
had barely survived its first meeting with the Calamarain; if these mounting tachyon emissions had anything to do with those enigmatic beings, then the situation might be more serious than they had first thought.

“Excuse me, Captain,” Lem Faal asked, understandably concerned about the effect of Data’s theory on his experiment, “but who or what are the Calamarain?”

“An unusual life-form,” Picard told him, “that we encountered many years ago. They exist as swirls of ionized gas within a huge cloud of plasma traveling through open space. The Calamarain took hostile action against the
Enterprise,
but their real target was Q himself, who, at that point in time, had lost his powers and taken refuge aboard the ship. Apparently, Q made an enemy of the Calamarain sometime in the past, and they intended to take advantage of his temporary weakness to get their revenge once and for all.”

“Can hardly blame them for that,” Riker commented. Like most anyone who spent any length of time with Q, the first officer had no great love for the vexatious entity. Picard wondered if the female Q ever felt the same way.

“Agreed, Number One,” he said. “Ultimately, Q regained his powers and repelled the Calamarain, and that’s the last we had heard of them until now.” Picard leaned forward in his chair as he considered all the possibilities. “Data, how likely is it that this is the work of the Calamarain?”

Data analyzed the readings on his console. “That is difficult to say, Captain. Their initial scans in our previous encounter consisted of very broad-based emissions, registering seventy-five rems on the Berthold scale.” Picard nodded, remembering vividly the intensity of the alien scan they had experienced years ago: a brilliant deluge of light that had seemed to blot out everything in sight. The Calamarain’s first few scans had actually blinded everyone on board momentarily. “These new emissions are far less intense, by several orders of magnitude, but it is a difference of degree, not kind. They may simply be observing us in a more subtle and surreptitious manner.” Data swiveled in his chair to address Picard directly. “On the other hand, the tachyon surge could also be caused by any number of unusual natural conditions. It may be that the barrier itself has effects on the surrounding space that we are unable to detect at present.”

“Last time the Calamarain attacked us because Q was aboard,” Riker pointed out. “If the Calamarain are spying on us, and I realize that’s a fairly big ‘if,’ I think we can safely assume that Q is involved somehow.”

“That is a plausible assumption,” Data agreed.

“What I don’t understand,” Geordi said, “is why would the Calamarain be interested in us now? This is hardly the first time we’ve hosted Q since that time he lost his powers.”

Would that it were so,
Picard thought privately. He could’ve done without that vision of his future self suffering from the effects of Irumodic syndrome.

“They’ve never come after us the last several times Q showed up,” Geordi continued, “and it sure doesn’t look like he’s been turned into a mortal again.”

“Far from it,” Baeta Leyoro added with obvious regret. Picard suspected that she would love to get her hands on a powerless and vulnerable Q.
She could probably sell tickets,
he thought.

“We should not jump to assumptions,” he stated firmly. “The Calamarain have not been observed in Federation space for over a decade, and our previous encounter with them was several hundred light-years from this vicinity.” Picard rose from his chair and looked over Data’s shoulder at the readings on the Ops console; a rising line charted the growth of the tachyon effect as it approached a level established by the Calamarain so many years ago. “Still, we should be prepared for any possibility.” He turned toward the science station. “Mr. La Forge, when the Calamarain attacked us before, you managed to adjust the harmonics of our deflector shields to provide us with a measure of protection against their tachyon blasts. Please program the ship’s computer to do so again should the need arise.”

“Yes, sir,” Geordi said. “I’ll get on that right away.”

Picard exchanged a look with Lieutenant Leyoro at tactical. Her eyes gleamed and the corners of her lips tipped upward in a look of much-delayed gratification, but she resisted, with admirable restraint, whatever temptation she might have felt to say, “I told you so.”

“Captain Picard,” Faal said, “this is all very interesting, but perhaps we should proceed with launching the probe?” He fingered his hypospray anxiously. “I cannot stress how eager I am to attempt the experiment.”

“Mr. La Forge?” Picard asked. “Do you require any more time to reprogram the deflectors?”

“No, sir,” Geordi reported with admirable efficiency. “The adjusted settings are on call.”
Excellent,
Picard thought, glad that they were ready for even the most unlikely of scenarios. Now it was simply a matter of continuing with their mission before Q—or the Calamarain, if they were truly close at hand—could intervene. “You may launch the probe as planned, Mr. La Forge,” he stated.

Geordi reached for the launch controls, only to be caught off guard by a blinding flash directly in front of him. For a second, Picard feared that the science station had exploded; then he realized what the flash really entailed.
Blast,
he thought.
Not again!

Q was back, sitting upon the launch controls, clad in the unearned honors of a Starfleet uniform. Geordi stepped backward involuntarily, and Q peered at him with interest. He took a closer look at Geordi. “Are those new eyes, Mr. Engineer? I can’t say they’re very flattering, although I suppose it beats wearing a chrome fender in front of your face.”

He looked past Geordi and cast a dour eye on the shimmering barrier upon the main viewer. “You disappoint me so, Jean-Luc. I never thought suicide missions were exactly your style.” He hopped nimbly off the science console and strolled toward Picard. “Leave the galaxy? Why, you foolhardy humans couldn’t put one foot into the Gamma Quadrant without starting a war with the Dominion. What makes you think the rest of the universe is going to be any better?”

“That’s enough,” Riker said. “The captain has better things to do with his time than listen to you.”

Q paid the first officer no heed. “Tell me, Jean-Luc, I know you have a childish fondness for hard-boiled detective yarns.” He held out a palm on which a single white egg now balanced upon its end. A caricature of Picard’s scowling face was painted on the shell of the presumably hard-boiled egg. “Bit of a resemblance, isn’t there?” Q commented. He blew on his hand and the egg wafted away like a mirage. “But haven’t you ever paid attention to some of your species’ old monster movies?” His voice dropped several octaves, taking on a sepulchral tone. “There are some things that insignificant, short-lived mortals are meant to leave alone.” He gave Picard what seemed, for Q, a remarkably sober look, and when he spoke again his voice sounded notably free of irony or sarcasm. “The barrier is one of them, Picard. Trust me on this.”

Trust? Q?
Of the many surprising and exceptional developments in this highly eventful mission, this suggestion struck Picard as the most unlikely of all. He wasn’t sure Q could be direct and honest if his own immortal existence depended on it. “That’s not enough,” Picard told him. “You need to tell me more than that.”

“It’s none of your business!” he said petulantly, apparently unable to maintain a sincere appearance for more than a moment or two. “You try to offer a few helpful tips to an inferior organism, but do they appreciate it? Of course not!” He paced back and forth in front of the viewscreen, looking exasperated beyond all measure. “Why can’t you simply admit that we Q are older and wiser than you are?”

“Older, certainly,” Picard said, “but not necessarily wiser. If you are at all typical of your kind, then the fabled Q Continuum is not above mere pettiness and spite.” He rose from his chair and confronted Q.
Let’s have this out here and now,
he determined. “As you might imagine, I’ve given the matter a great deal of thought, and I’ve come to the conclusion that the Continuum is more fallible and prone to error than you care to admit. Let’s look at what we mere mortals have learned about their behavior,” he said, ticking his points off on his fingers.

“They put lesser life-forms on trial for the mere crime of not rising to their exalted level, all the while ignoring most of the conventions of due process recognized by supposedly inferior societies. They strip you of all your powers, placing you in mortal jeopardy, after having failed to keep your mischievous excesses under control. Then they reverse their decision and let you run amok through the galaxy again.” Q harrumphed indignantly, but Picard showed him no mercy. “According to your own admission, the Continuum summarily executed Amanda Rogers’s parents for choosing to live as human beings, left the orphaned child—one of their own—to be raised among we so-called primitive humans, then had the audacity to return years later and threaten Amanda herself with death unless she relinquished her own humanity.” He shook his head slowly. “Banishment. Executions. Threats of genocide against less gifted races. These don’t strike me as the actions of an advanced and enlightened society. Indeed, I could argue that the Klingons or the Cardassians have a higher claim to social progress.”