“Now’s the time,” 0 spat through clenched teeth. “I can’t hold them off any longer.”
He’s going to panic, Picard realized, only a heartbeat before the young Q let out an inarticulate howl and swept he, 0, and the rest of their infamous party away in a flash of white light. Picard found himself alone in deep space except for the continuing presence of the Q he was accustomed to. The rest of the Continuum remained invisible to his senses.
“You don’t need to say anything, Picard,” his companion said. “I know when I’ve made an ass of myself.”
“Got a fine young maid,
Her dowry’s paid,
My fortunes made,
My plans are laid,
I’ll sit awhile in shade….”
Young Q shook his head in disbelief. 0 sounded altogether too pleased with himself for someone who had called down the judgment of the Continuum upon them all. How could he sing at a time like this? I’m a fugitive, he realized, and an immortal one. My life is over and it won’t ever end.
Dejected, he sat upon the ground, his knees drawn up beneath his chin. The ground itself consisted of solid dilithium, its crystalline surface worn smooth by the ceaseless passage of the dense metallic liquid that enveloped Q and his partners in crime. The metallic sea, which covered the entire surface of the polished, planet-sized mass of dilithium, extended for hundreds of thousands of kilometers overhead before eventually segueing into an even vaster expanse of swirling helium and hydrogen vapors blown by hurricane-force winds exceeding five hundred kilometers an hour. The buried core of this gas giant, upon which they now resided, located in what would someday be called the Detrian system, had been one of his favorite hiding places when he was a child; it was like being on the yolk of an enormous egg, shielded from prying eyes by several layers of liquid and gaseous shell. He had told no one about it, not even 0, but never had he dreamed that he would someday use it to hide out from justice. This isn’t the way it was supposed to happen, he grieved.
“Maybe we should turn ourselves in,” he suggested, looking up from the polished surface of the core. He could no longer bear to stare at his own guilty reflection. “Perhaps the Continuum will show mercy if we surrender freely.”
0 did not respond to his suggestion, but instead kept on singing, missing only a beat or two in the melody, as the lyrics took a peculiar turn:
“Woe to those who are afraid,
I’ve never looked kindly upon being betrayed….”
Why is he looking at me? Q thought nervously. 0 was just singing, that’s all. “You don’t know the Continuum like I do,” he insisted. “They can actually be quite reasonable on occasion. I’m sure if we explain ourselves, show them how matters simply got out of hand, we could expect some leniency.”
“I venture I’d be quite dismayed….”
Several meters away, skating blithely over the slick crystal plane, 0 laughed out loud at the end of his song. He retied his unfurled cravat as he coasted over the solid dilithium. “You’ve a lot to learn about being a rebel, my naive young friend. Rule Number One: Never surrender. Isn’t that right, fellows?”
The other entities clustered nearby. The One had formed Himself an impressive-looking dilithium throne in which He sat rather too regally, Q thought, for One who had so recently been forced to flee for His liberty. Gorgan looked significantly more agitated, pacing back and forth behind The One’s throne, the hem of his amethyst robe brushing the ground. His immaterial form shimmered, looking slightly less solid than a hologram. Silent as ever, (*) hovered in the flowing currents of the metal sea, casting a bloodred radiance over the entire scene.
“Isn’t that right?” 0 repeated loudly, a dangerous edge in his voice. Bubbles streamed from his lips, ascending toward the gaseous atmosphere far, far above.
“Oh yes, certainly,” Gorgan piped up unctuously. As always, his voice had a peculiarly unnatural echo, as if it were generated artificially by a being whose lips and lungs were merely simulcra of the real things. “No surrender at all,” he insisted.
The One sat immobile upon His throne, His upper limbs resting upon sculpted armrests. His golden plate armor, medieval in style, showed no sign of rust or corrosion, despite the liquid nature of this undersea hiding place. “The final battle is not yet fought. My Might will endure unto the last.”
“That’s more like it,” 0 said gruffly, sliding toward Q. “An occasional reversal is to be expected when you’re living boldly. I warned you there’d be danger, Q. That’s the price you pay for taking chances.”
They were not entirely alone. Eyeless, segmented, cylindrical life-forms, evolved to survive the incredible pressure of the gas giant’s lower depths, swam through the molten dilithium, instinctively giving 0 and the others a wide berth. They’re smarter than I was, Q thought, envying the primitive creatures. “Is that what we’re doing?” he asked. “Living boldly? Being rebels?” He stared glumly at the horizon, where the solid dilithium met the aqueous sky, refusing to look at 0. “So why do I feel like some wretched criminal on the run?”
0 glared down at him. “All right then, let’s have this out here and now. What are you so morose about? The Tkon? Ephemeral creatures whom the universe will never miss. A million years from now? They’ll be completely forgotten, while we go on forever. They should be thankful they attracted our attention. At least we’ll remember the fine sport they provided. That’s a better legacy than most such mortals can expect.”
“Sport?” Q jumped to his feet, practically shouting in 0’s face. Blind eels, their sinuous bodies covered by iridescent scales, swam away in alarm. “They didn’t stand a chance. It wasn’t fair.”
“What does fair have to do with it?” 0 held his ground. “Of course the outcome is always the same. They’re just animals after all. Crude, corporeal creations fit only to provide us with a bit of diversion. It’s the style with which such savage species are dispatched that matters, Q. You have to learn to appreciate the elegance of extinction, the deft and delicate dance of destruction.”
“You blew up their sun! You call that delicate?” The angry words came gushing out of him in a flood of bubbles. He couldn’t have held the accusations back if he wanted to. “I saw you, 0. I was there. You weren’t concerned with style. You were just angry at the Tkon because they beat Gorgan and the others at their own morbid little games. They beat you—and you killed them for it.”
“They were creatures!” 0 spat angrily. “Why can’t you understand that? Creatures like that can’t beat beings like us. It’s impossible by definition.” He sneered scornfully at Q. “Don’t waste my time crying over the poor, unfortunate Tkon. I know what your real problem is. You’re afraid. For the first time in your puerile, immature existence, you’ve stepped outside the boundaries set by that hidebound Continuum of yours, and now you want to go scurrying back in search of forgiveness.” He made a clucking sound with his tongue. “I thought you were braver than that, but maybe you’re just another timid little Q after all.”
“That’s not true,” Q shot back, but with less certainty than with which he had spoken for the Tkon.
“Isn’t it?” 0 asked. “Where’s the Q who pulled me through the Guardian of Forever, and the devil with the consequences? I thought you wanted to be different from your conservative brethren. I thought you wanted to make your mark on the multiverse, maybe even give the rest of the Continuum a much-needed jolt or two. I thought you wanted adventure and excitement and glory.”
“I did. I do. I…I…” He didn’t know what he wanted anymore.
“That’s not what it looks like to me. One little scolding from the other Q and suddenly all your revolutionary zeal and ambition collapses like a chronal wave in a transtemporal field.” Without warning, 0 shoved Q hard enough to knock the younger entity off his feet. Q landed with a bump onto the ground, his flailing limbs churning up the viscous fluid surrounding him, creating short-lived eddies in the flowing dilithium. “See,” his assailant taunted, “a little pressure and you fall right over
. You can’t even stand up for your own convictions.”
Is that true? Q wondered, sprawled upon the glossy surface of the core. Am I merely afraid of getting caught? He was afraid of what the Continuum might do certainly, and with good reason, but was that all he felt at this moment? Maybe 0 was right and wrong at the same time, at least where Q was concerned. This is absurd, he thought angrily, too disgusted by himself and this entire situation to even bother climbing to his feet again. I’m a Q. I know all there is to know. So how come I can’t even figure myself out?
“What I didn’t realize, in the greenness of my youth,” the later Q said from a few meters (and one plane of reality) away, “was that I had far more options than simply 0 or the Continuum. There were an infinite number of ways I could amuse myself, and scandalize my fellow Q, without throwing my lot in with 0 and his motley band.” A deep-dwelling eel, taking a long detour around the five fugitives, passed through the older Q’s torso as though he wasn’t there. “As you must have noticed, mon capitaine, I’ve hardly required assistance to make your humdrum life more interesting.”
Picard decided to let that remark pass. He’d exchanged enough repartee with Q to last him a lifetime. He was rather more interested in finding out what happened next to the younger version of Q, who seemed to be digging himself a deeper and deeper hole with each new development. Although there was little love lost between himself and the usual Q, Picard could not help sympathizing with the star-crossed youth at 0’s feet. He knew too well how easily an inexperienced, impetuous novice could get in over his head, wincing inwardly as he recalled that long-ago incident at the Academy when his headstrong folly had nearly cost him his Starfleet career before it had truly begun. Too bad there’s no Boothby to counsel young Q at this crucial crossroads, he reflected, only 0 and his unsavory compatriots.
“You’re looking unusually pensive, Jean-Luc, even for you.” Q plucked a couple of unsuspecting eels from the adjacent reality and began tying them into knots, much like a traditional children’s performer turning balloons into animals. An instant later, he presented Picard with a tangle of alien organisms twisted into a miniature replica of the Enterprise. “Hit a nerve, have we?”
Picard scowled, unhappy to be reminded that his ship was facing danger without him. The Calamarain had only just come within range of Data’s sensors when Q snatched him away from the bridge. Although he had complete confidence in Will Riker to command the Enterprise in his absence, he found it deeply disturbing not to know how his ship was faring several hundred thousand years from now. “Are you quite sure that you are the more mature Q?” he said acidly as he took the quivering memento from his guide. As gently as possible, Picard tried to extricate the abused eels from their forced contortions. It was like trying to untangle a plate of writhing gagh.
“Touché, Jean-Luc,” Q said, looking pleased to have provoked a response from Picard, “but do not confuse adult whimsy and irreverence with juvenile misbehavior.” He gestured toward his younger incarnation, awash in difficulties and confusion. “I would never get into such an embarrassing fix.”
“Except you did,” Picard pointed out. Successfully liberating the knotted eels from each other, he released them to swim away as quickly as their long, segmented bodies could carry them. He wondered if they would ever find their way back to their own phase of existence. “That troubled boy is you.”
“Please!” Q rolled his eyes in exasperation. “Is an oak tree the same as an acorn? Is a silicon nodule no different than a Mother Horta? He is then. I am now.” He shrugged his shoulders. “Granted, at the moment now is then, but that’s another matter altogether.”
Picard endured a familiar frustration. Why do I even try conversing with him? He contemplated the younger Q once more. If anything, Q had gotten even more vexing and impossible to deal with over the intervening aeons.
Intent upon their own ongoing drama, neither young Q, nor the bad company into which he had fallen, had noticed the abrupt disappearance of two eels from the murky ocean enclosing the planet’s solid core. Instead 0 focused all his formidable personality upon the fallen form of Q. “Well?” he demanded. “What’s it going to be? Are you going to sit there, stewing in childish self-pity and remorse, or are you ready to take on the Continuum and anyone else who tries to stop you from fulfilling your true potential? Think carefully, Q. Your destiny depends on what you do next.”
Before the young entity could answer, an intense white flare illuminated the metal sea, overpowering (*)’s incarnadine glow. For an instant, the nocturnal depths of the gas giant were suffused with the brightness of a sunny afternoon. “It’s the Continuum!” Q shouted, his voice torn between alarm and relief. “They’ve found us!”
Three
The readings on her medical tricorder shocked Dr. Beverly Crusher. As she scanned Lieutenant Leyoro’s brain with the handheld peripheral sensor, the display screen on the tricorder reported alarming levels of bio-neural energy. The stricken security officer’s cerebral cortex was being drowned in neurotransmitters, accelerating her synaptic activity at a dangerous rate. She can’t survive much more of this, Crusher realized.
Leyoro’s unconscious body had been beamed directly onto the primary biobed from the bridge. A surgical support frame was clamped over her torso to provide cardiovascular support and even emergency defibrillation if necessary. Crusher kept a close eye on her patient’s vital signs and basic metabolic functions, as reported on the monitor mounted above the bed. To her distress, the heightened electrical activity within Leyoro’s brain was causing inflammation and spasms all along her artificially augmented nervous system. Leyoro’s limbs twitched uncontrollably until Crusher programmed the SSF to provide a steady intravenous infusion of benzocyatzine to inhibit the muscular contractions. Thankfully, the equipment did not require gravity to function effectively. The muscular relaxant merely took care of one symptom, though; treating the root cause of her condition was going to be a lot trickier.
I’m dealing with too many unknowns here, Crusher thought, frustrated. There was little reliable documentation on the telepathic shock sometimes induced by the galactic barrier, primarily because all attempts to cross the barrier had been explicitly banned for close to a century because of that very danger. Furthermore, there was too much she didn’t know about the specific neurological modifications the Angosian military scientists had performed on Leyoro during the Tarsian War. Leyoro’s medical records were on file, as were the examinations Crusher had performed years ago on Roga Danar, another victim of Angosian biochemical tampering, but that hardly prepared her to treat this unexpected interaction between the barrier’s psychic energies and Leyoro’s heightened neurology. This was a one-of-a-kind medical emergency.
Fortunately, sickbay had calmed some now that the battle with the Calamarain was over for the time being. Most of the casualties from that conflict had been treated and discharged already, except for a few of the more serious cases, which were currently under the watchful care of the EMH. Crusher shook her head in disbelief; she never thought she’d be grateful for having that supercilious hologram around. Maybe he had his uses after all, even if his bedside manner still left a lot to be desired. Too bad, though, that Selar had transferred to the Excalibur. Vulcans were supposed to be immune to the barrier’s effects.
She glanced over quickly at the adjacent biobed, where Deanna Troi rested in an artificially induced coma, a set of cortical stimulators blinking upon the Betazoid officer’s forehead. Crusher had placed Troi in a coma herself, lowering her brain activity, in hopes of protecting the empathic counselor from the same telepathic overload that was killing Leyoro. So far, judging from the display above Troi’s biobed, it seemed to be working; Deanna’s synaptic levels were well within the acceptable range for an adult Betazoid of her age and telepathic ability, even though her metabolism was only gradually recovering from the overdose of polyadrenaline she had received from Lem Faal’s hypospray.
I’m still shocked by what he did, she tho
ught, remembering the scientist’s startling attack on Deanna. I knew he was agitated about his experiment, not to mention his terminal disease, but I never thought he’d go so far as to assault a crew member rather than abandon his project. She had not seen Faal since he fled the sickbay after injecting Troi with the polyadrenaline, nor did she know what had happened to Faal’s young son, Milo, who had taken off after his father. As Betazoids and full telepaths, both Faal and the boy were also in severe danger from the psychic effects of the barrier. She had sent a security officer in search of them, and informed the bridge of the disturbance, but so far security had not returned either Lem Faal or Milo. For all I know, they could be worse off than Leyoro right now.
The security chief’s neurotransmitters continued to rise. An agonized moan escaped her lips. Crusher knew she had to try something—anything—before Leyoro suffered permanent brain damage or worse. It was too late to use a cortical stimulator to induce a coma the way she had with Deanna; Leyoro’s condition had to be stabilized before Crusher could even attempt to shut her brain down in that fashion. Tapping on the touch-sensitive controls of the surgical clamshell, she added four hundred milligrams of triclenidil to the intravenous infusion. It was a dangerous ploy; the triclenidil would enhance Leyoro’s natural defenses, but might also enhance the psionic sensitivity that had rendered her vulnerable in the first place. She wished she could risk an analgesic as well, maybe hyrocortilene or metacetamine. The poor woman sounded like she was in agony, but Crusher couldn’t take the chance that further medication might produce a dangerous counterreaction to the chemicals she had already administered to Leyoro.
Thank goodness the little girl is safe at least. Alyssa Ogawa was watching over Lem Faal’s youngest child, Kinya, over in the emergency pediatric unit, where the Betazoid child slept in a coma similar to Deanna’s. Crusher knew the nurse would call her instantly if Kinya showed any symptoms at all of neurological distress.