Q-Space Read online

  And, of course, there was Q….

  “Captain,” Leyoro persisted, “with all due respect, we have to assume hostile intention until we can prove otherwise. Request permission to modulate the shield harmonics to repel the tachyons.”

  Picard weighed the matter carefully before reaching his decision. “No, Lieutenant, if we start to assume a hostile intent behind every unusual phenomenon we encounter, then our charter to explore the unknown will be severely compromised. For all we know, these harmless emissions may be the first overtures of an entirely new species of being, or evidence of a previously unknown natural phenomenon, and we would do ourselves and our mission a grave disservice if we prematurely cut ourselves off from that evidence out of fear and distrust.”

  Besides, he thought, sometimes a statistical blip was just that. The universe was all about probabilities, according to standard quantum theory, and if there was one thing he had learned during his long career in Starfleet, it was that the galaxy was big enough and old enough that even the most unlikely probabilities came to pass occasionally.

  As if to prove the point, Q appeared upon the bridge. “Scans. Probes. Deflectors,” he mimicked. “Don’t you ever get fed up with those tired old tricks?” He posed between the captain and Troi, resting his left elbow on the back of the counselor’s chair. His standard-issue Starfleet uniform made him almost inconspicuous upon the bridge. “I have an idea. Why don’t you simply turn around and go home? That would sure catch those pesky tachyons by surprise.”

  “Go home?” Lem Faal asked anxiously. “Captain, you can’t listen to this…being!” Picard assumed that Q required no introduction, but noted that Faal appeared more disturbed by Q’s opposition to the experiment than by Q’s startling entrance. The Betazoid was flushed and trembling at the prospect of watching his plans unravel. Picard heard his weakened lungs laboring strenuously. “You can’t cancel the experiment now!”

  “I don’t intend to,” Picard informed the scientist while looking Q firmly in the eye, “not unless our visitor can provide me with a compelling and indisputable reason to do so.”

  “A reason…from this creature?” Faal exclaimed, clearly aghast at the very notion of giving Q a say in the matter. “You can’t be serious, Picard. Are you out of your mind?”

  “I’ve often wondered the same thing,” Q commented. “You really should consider an insanity defense, Jean-Luc, the next time humanity’s on trial.”

  “This is ridiculous,” Faal protested, scurrying toward Picard, but Troi rose and placed a gentle but restraining hand upon the scientist’s arm, leaving the captain to deal with the insouciant intruder.

  A thought came to Picard and he stared at Q through narrowed eyes. “Do either you or your family, Q, have anything to do with the surge in tachyon collisions we’re experiencing?”

  “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.

  Interlude

  “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—”

  Nine

  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?”