That might be easier accomplished without any Qs around to cloud the issue, he decided. “Excuse me,” he said to the woman seated to his right, ignoring for the moment the sound of the Calamarain pounding against the shields. He was unsure how to address her; although she claimed her name was Q as well, he still thought of her as a Q rather than the Q. “I’m afraid that the presence of you and your child upon the Enterprise may be provoking the Calamarain, complicating an already tense situation. As the acting commander of this vessel, I have to ask you to leave this ship immediately.”
She peered down her nose at him as she might at a yapping dog whose pedigree left something to be desired. One eyebrow arched skeptically. For a second or two, Riker feared that she wasn’t even going to acknowledge his request at all, but eventually she heaved a weary sigh. “Nonsense,” she said, in a tone that reminded him rather too much of Lwaxana Troi at her most overbearing. “The Calamarain wouldn’t dare threaten a Q. This is entirely between you and that noxious little species out there.”
Riker rose from the captain’s chair and looked down on the seated woman, utilizing every possible psychological advantage at his disposal. She didn’t look too impressed, and Riker recalled that, standing, the woman was nearly as tall as he was. “That may be so,” he insisted, “but I can’t afford to take that risk.” He tried another tack. “Surely, in all the universe, there is someplace else you’d rather be.”
“Several trillion,” she informed him haughtily, “but dear q is amused by your little skirmish.” She patted the boy’s tousled head indulgently.
Don’t think of her as a godlike superbeing, Riker thought as a new approach occurred to him. Think of her as a doting mom. His own mother had tragically died when he was very young, but Riker thought he understood the type. “Are you certain it’s not too violent for him?” he asked, trying to sound as concerned and sympathetic as possible. “Things are likely to get messy soon, especially once our shields break down. It’s not going to be pretty.”
The woman’s brow furrowed at his words. It appeared the potential grisliness of the crew’s probable demise had not crossed her mind before. She glanced around her, checking out the various fragile humanoids populating the bridge. Outside, the tempest bellowed its intention to destroy the Enterprise and all aboard her. As if to make Riker’s point, the ship pitched forward, slamming Lieutenant Leyoro into her tactical console. Her grunt of pain, followed by a look of stoic endurance, did not escape the female Q’s notice.
Riker felt encouraged by her hesitant silence. This might actually work, he thought. “You know,” he added, “I cried my eyes out the first time I read Old Yeller.”
The woman gave him a blank look; apparently her omniscience did not extend to classic children’s fiction of the human species. Still, the basic idea seemed to get across. She cast a worried look at her son. “Perhaps you have a point,” she conceded. Resignation settled onto her patrician features. “Too much mindless entertainment cannot be good for little q…even if his father can’t get enough of your primitive antics.”
With that, both mother and child vanished in a flash of white light that left Riker blinking. He breathed a sigh of relief, settling back into the captain’s chair, until q reappeared upon his own knee. “Stay!” he yelped boisterously. For a superior being from a higher plane of reality, q felt solid enough and, if Riker could trust his own nostrils, in need of a fresh diaper beneath his miniature Starfleet uniform.
Riker groaned aloud. Good thing the captain’s still missing, he thought, for the first and only time since Picard’s abduction. The captain, it was well-known, had even less patience with small children than his first officer. Now what do I do with this kid? he wondered, looking rather desperately at Deanna for assistance. Despite their otherwise dire circumstances, the counselor could not resist a smile at Riker’s sudden predicament.
Mercifully, the female Q materialized in front of Riker and lifted the toddler from his knee. “Come along, young q,” she scolded gently. “I mean it.” She tapped her foot impatiently upon the floor, giving Riker just enough warning to avert his eyes before the pair disappeared in another blinding flash of light.
He waited apprehensively for several seconds thereafter, holding his breath against the likelihood of another surprise reappearance. Had Q and q really left for the time being? He did not delude himself that the Enterprise had seen the last of either of them, let alone their mischievous relation, but he’d gladly settle for a temporary respite if it gave him enough time to settle matters with the Calamarain. Just what we needed, he thought sarcastically. Three Qs to worry about from now on.
Deanna broke the silence. “I think they’re gone, Will.”
“Thank heaven for small favors,” he said. Now, if only the Calamarain could be disposed of so easily! “Mr. Data, activate your modified translation system. Now that our visitors have departed, let’s try talking to the Calamarain one more time.”
“Understood, Commander.” The gold-skinned android manipulated the controls at Ops. After much effort, Data had devised a program by which humanoid language could be translated into the shortwave tachyon bursts the Calamarain used to communicate, and vice versa. “The translator is on-line. You may speak normally.”
Riker leaned against the back of the captain’s chair and took a deep breath. “This is Commander Riker of the U.S.S. Enterprise, addressing the Calamarain.” In truth, he wasn’t exactly sure whom he was speaking to. Give me a face I can talk to any day, he thought. “I’m asking you to call off your hostile actions toward our vessel. Speaking on behalf of this ship, and the United Federation of Planets, we are more than willing to discuss your concerns regarding the…moat. Let us return to our own space now, and perhaps our two peoples can communicate further in the future.”
I can’t get more direct than that, Riker thought. He could only hope that the Calamarain would realize how reasonable his offer was. If not, our only remaining option may be to find a way to destroy the Calamarain before they destroy us, he realized. A grim outcome to this mission, even assuming their foe could be extinguished somehow.
“They’ve heard you,” Troi reported, sensing the Calamarain’s reaction. “I think they’re going to respond.”
“Incoming transmission via tachyon emission,” Data confirmed. He consulted his monitor and made a few quick adjustments to the translation program.
An eerie voice, devoid of gender or human inflections, echoed throughout the bridge. Riker decided he preferred the computer’s ordinary tones, or even the harsh cadence of spoken Klingon.
“We/singular remain/endure the Calamarain,” it intoned. “Moat is sacred/essential. No release/No escape. Chaos waits/threatens. Enterprise brings/succors chaos. Evaporation/sublimation is mandatory/preferable.”
Riker scowled at the awkward and downright cryptic phrasing of the Calamarain’s message. Unfortunately, Data didn’t have nearly enough time to get all the bugs worked out of the new translation program. It will have to do, he resolved. Throughout human history, explorers and peacemakers had coped without any foolproof, high-tech translating devices. Could the crew of the Enterprise do any less?
When the Calamarain talked of “chaos,” he guessed, they referred to Q and his kind. Frankly, he couldn’t blame the Calamarain for mistrusting anyone associated with Q; that devilish troublemaker wasn’t exactly the most sterling character witness. As for “evaporation/sublimation,” he feared that term was simply the cloud creatures’ way of describing the forthcoming destruction of the Enterprise, sublimation being the chemical process by which solid matter was reduced to a gaseous state. Who knows? he thought. Maybe the Calamarain think they’re doing us a favor by liberating our respective molecules from the constraints of solid existence.
He didn’t exactly see things their way. “Listen to me,” he told the Calamarain, hoping that his own words weren’t getting as badly garbled as theirs. He strove to keep his syntax as simple as possible. “The beings known as the Q C
ontinuum are not our allies. We do not serve the Q.”
In fact, he recalled, Q had also warned Captain Picard to stay away from the galactic barrier
“Chaos within/without,” the Calamarain stated mysteriously. “Chaos then/now/ to come. No/not be/not again. Excess risk/dread. No Enterprise/ no be.”
That doesn’t sound good, Riker thought, whatever it means. He refused to give up, boiling his intended message down to its basics. “Please believe me. We will not harm you. Let us go.” Even our shaky translator can’t mangle that, he prayed.
The Calamarain responded not with words but with a roar of thunder that rocked the bridge. Riker felt his breath knocked out of him as the floor suddenly lurched to starboard, nearly toppling him from the captain’s chair. Troi gasped nearby and fierce bolts of electrical fire arced across the viewscreen. At the conn, Ensign Clarze struggled to stabilize their flight path; sweat beaded on his smooth, hairless skull. Behind Riker, Lieutenant Leyoro held on to the tactical podium for dear life while the rest of the bridge staff fought to remain at their stations. Only Data looked unfazed by the abrupt jolt. “The Calamarain are not replying to your last transmission, Commander,” he reported. The android inspected the raging tempest on the screen. “At least not verbally.”
Troi released her grip on her chair’s armrests as the floor leveled. The din of the Calamarain’s attack persisted, though, like a ringing in Riker’s ears and a constant vibration through his bones. “I sense great impatience,” she informed him. “They’re through with talking, Will.”
“I got that impression,” he said. He looked around the bridge at the tense and wary faces of the men and women depending on his leadership. Wherever you are, Captain, he thought, I hope you’re faring better than us.
Two
“Now where are we?” he asked. “And when?”
Captain Jean-Luc Picard, late of the Starship Enterprise, looked around as he found himself drifting in deep space. An astounding abundance of stars surrounded him on all sides, more than he had ever seen from a single location before. Just by twisting his neck from side to side, he could spot an astonishing variety of stellar phenomena: giant pillars of dust and gas rising up into the starry void, great globular clusters filled with millions of shining blue suns, supernovas spewing light and matter in their violent death throes, nebulas, quasars, pulsars, and more. Craning his head back, he saw above him what looked like the awesome spectacle of two enormous clouds of stars colliding; huge glowing spirals, streaked with shades of blue and scarlet and bedecked with countless specks of white-hot fire, merged into an amorphous mass of luminescence large enough, Picard guessed, to hold—or destroy—several million solar systems. Were any of those worlds inhabited? he wondered, hoping despite all appearances that some form of sentient life could survive the tremendous cosmic cataclysm transpiring overhead. Then Q drifted between Picard and the fusing stellar clusters, completely spoiling the view.
“Quite a show, isn’t it?” Q remarked, floating on his back with his interlocked hands cradling the back of his head, his elbows extended toward the sky. Like Picard, he wore only a standard Starfleet uniform, his omniscience protecting them both from the vacuum. “You should have seen it the first time.”
Impressive, yes, Picard agreed silently, but where exactly, in space and time were they now? As he floated in the void, he considered all that he saw around him. Judging from the sheer density of stars in sight, he theorized that he and Q were either very close to the galactic core of the Milky Way or else sometime very distant in the past, when the expanding universe was much smaller, and the interstellar distances much shorter, than they were in his own time. Or both, he realized.
“When is this?” he asked Q again. At the preceding stop on Q’s tour, Picard had found himself millions of years in the past. He could only speculate what era Q had brought him to now, just as he could only ponder what devious reason Q had for abducting him in the first place. Besides Q’s own perverse amusement, that is. “I demand an explanation.”
“One would think you would have learned by now, mon capitaine,” Q replied, “that your demands and desires are quite irrelevant where I am concerned.” He assumed a standing posture a few meters away from Picard. “For what it’s worth, though, we are presently a mere one million years before your home sweet home in the twenty-fourth century.” A polished bronze pocketwatch materialized in Q’s palm and he squinted at its face. “Hmmm. We seem to be a few minutes early.”
“Early for what?” Picard asked. At every previous stop, they had observed the activities of Q’s younger self. Yet they appeared to be very much alone at the present, with only a surplus of stars to keep them company. A million years ago, he thought, both amazed and aghast. Even if I knew where Earth was among those distant stars, the first human beings will not stand erect for another five hundred thousand years. Here and now, I am the only living Homo sapiens in the entire universe. It was a terrifying thought.
“For them,” Q answered as a sudden flash of white light attracted Picard’s eyes. The light flared and died in an instant, leaving behind two humanoid figures striding across the empty void as though they were walking upon a level pathway. They approached him and Q at a brisk pace, coming within ten or fifteen meters of where Picard floated beside Q. Paradoxically, he thought he heard footsteps, despite the utter absurdity of any sound existing in the vacuum. Then again, he thought, with Q, nothing is impossible.
He recognized both figures from earlier points in Q’s past. One of them was Q himself, albeit a million years younger than the self-centered and thoroughly irritating individual who had kidnapped him only hours before. This was a more youthful Q, he had learned, one at the very onset of his mischievous career. Would that the Continuum had curbed him way back here, Picard thought, knowing better than most just how insufferable Q would become in the many millennia ahead. I don’t know what’s scarier, he mused, a more juvenile Q or a one closer to the Q I know.
The other figure made Picard even more uneasy. He called himself 0, as in nil, and he claimed to be an explorer from a far-off dimension unknown even to the Continuum. Picard, who considered himself a quick judge of character, found 0 quite a shady customer. Back on the Enterprise, he thought, I wouldn’t trust him within a light-year of my starship. Picard was quick to remember that everything he now saw had been “translated” by Q into terms his human mind and senses could comprehend. That being the case, Picard had to wonder what more-than-human characteristics were represented by 0’s weathered features and stout frame, and how much the older Q’s memories may have colored his anthropomorphized portrait of the roguish stranger. From what preternatural first impression came the devilish gleam in the man’s azure eyes, the cocksure set of his toothy grin, or the swagger in his stride? Picard could tell 0 was trouble at first glance; so why couldn’t the Q of this era? Just who or what was 0? Falstaff to the young Q’s Prince Hal, Picard speculated, falling back as ever on his beloved Shakespeare, or something a good deal more sinister? If nothing else, I’m accumulating valuable insights into the early days of the Q Continuum. He just hoped that he would someday be able to return to his own ship and era so that he could report all he had learned back to Starfleet, where the Q were justly regarded as one of the universe’s most intriguing mysteries—and potential threats.
As before, neither 0 nor the younger Q were aware of Q’s and Picard’s presence. Much like Scrooge and his ghostly visitors, Picard thought, when they spied on the likes of Bob Cratchit or Fezziwig.
0 sang boisterously as he trod the spaceways with Q:
“There was a young lad whose bold virility,
brought him some pains in a court of civility.”
The attire of the new arrivals, Picard noted, had changed significantly since 0’s first appearance in this universe. This came as no surprise; throughout Picard’s trek through time, the clothing of those he observed had evolved more or less along Earth’s historical lines. An artistic conceit, according to Q, in
tended to convey a sense of antiquity, as well as the gradual passage of time, to the likes of Picard, who had to wonder whether the concept of clothing even applied to the Q in their true form. How much of this is real, he mused, and how much simply stage dressing on the part of Q?
He might never know.
“On posh settees with pinky out,
He found not much to chat about.”
At present, 0 and the young Q affected the fashions of eighteenth-century Europe, some one hundred thousand millennia before the real thing. Both figures wore stylish velvet suits, 0’s a rich olive green, while Q preferred periwinkle blue. Their long coats were open in front to expose rosy damask vests from which ruffled shirt tops peeked. Black silk cravats were tied around their necks and each man wore a short brown wig, tied in the back, atop his head. Polished black shoes with gleaming metal buckles clicked impossibly against the emptiness of space, beneath white wool stockings that were held up by ribbons tied above the knee. They might have been two fine gentlemen out for a night on the town, Picard observed, except that, in this instance, that town was the known universe of a million years ago.
0’s singing voice was as gravelly as ever, and more enthusiastic than melodious:
“But on darkened nights, ’hind tavern gates,
He discovered he had lots of mates!”
Wrapping up his raucous ditty, he laughed and slapped young Q on the back. “Boldness!” 0 declared. “That’s the ticket. Follow your instincts and never mind what the fainthearted say.” His raspy voice held a trace of an accent that Picard couldn’t place; certainly it was nothing resembling the captain’s native French. 0’s crippled left leg dragged behind him as he hiked beside Q, expounding on a topic he had mentioned before. “Take the fine art of testing, say. Determining the ultimate limits and potential of lesser species under controlled conditions. That’s a fine and fitting vocation for beings like us. Who better than we to invent curious and creative challenges for our brutish brethren?”