The storm continued to rage outside, and Picard feared that the Calamarain would not deign to respond to his diplomatic overture. Then, coming over the com system, an inhuman voice, flat and genderless, spoke for the gaseous life-forms laying siege to the Enterprise:
“We/singular am/are the Calamarain. Woe/vengeance to Enterprise for bridging moat/restoring chaos. Woe/tragedy to vastness/life entire. Crime/atrocity/ madness. Shall not forget/forgive Enterprise. Dissipate/scatter/extinguish.”
Riker had not overstated matters, Picard noted, when he said that Data’s translation program still had some bugs to be worked out. This cryptic and expressionless communication bore little resemblance to the passionate discussions and debate that Picard had eavesdropped upon when he and Q observed the Calamarain in the distant past. Then the Calamarain had struck him as an immense symposium or university, devoted to the life of the mind and engrossed in an endless exploration of the cosmos, values quite in keeping with the highest ideals of Starfleet and the Federation. He heard little such common ground in the cold and somewhat garbled vocalizations emerging from the computer.
Still, the gist of the message was clear enough. The Calamarain blamed the Enterprise for releasing 0 back into the galaxy and were determined to exact revenge. How could he convince them otherwise, especially since the accusation was more or less true? He needed to persuade them that defeating 0 here and now was more important than assigning blame for the mistakes of the past. But how to do so, after Riker had done his best and yet failed at the same task?
I have an advantage Will did not, Picard realized. I know who the Calamarain are and where they came from. “Hear me,” he said. “I speak not of the Calamarain, but of the Coulalakritous. I remember their suffering and understand their anger.”
There was a pause, longer than before. Then the artificial voice spoke again, sounding as though it was coming from very far away:
“Who/how calls we/singular by oldest/sacred/hidden name? Who/how/why/ where? Explain/illuminate now.”
Well, at least I got their attention, Picard mused. The tricky part was going to be using this minor breakthrough to turn their attitude around before they did irreparable harm to the Enterprise and all aboard. “I have traveled to the past,” he began, deciding that it might be more politic not to mention Q’s involvement in that expedition, at least for now, “and I saw with my own eyes what 0 did to the Coulalakritous. It was an appalling crime and he deserved to be punished. But it is even more important that he not be allowed to commit further crimes. Save your strength for the true enemy. Help us against 0 now.”
Was it just wishful thinking, or had the thunder and lightning outside subsided to a degree over the last few minutes? Perhaps he was getting through to the Calamarain after all. He prayed that was so.
“Shields down to thirty-seven percent,” Berglund updated him, adding yet more urgency to Picard’s efforts.
“Why bridge moat/succor chaos?” the Calamarain asked atonally. “Enterprise rescue/restore chaos then. Wherefore/how fear chaos now?”
That the Calamarain were seeking to understand the Enterprise at all, no matter how suspiciously, Picard took as a very positive development. He only wished he had a better answer. “We were deceived,” he said simply. In truth, even now he did not fully understand what connection might exist between Faal and 0, although the Betazoid scientist’s bizarre behavior and inexplicable new powers strongly suggested that Lem Faal must have had a secret agenda all along. Deanna warned me, he recalled, that there was something not quite right about Faal. But who could have guessed he was working to let loose an ancient evil from the dawn of time?
“No/negative. Enterprise cannot be believed/trusted. Chaos-haven yesterday/today/tomorrow. We/singular cannot be misled/deterred.”
The Calamarain punctuated their unambiguous refutation of Picard’s claims with a resounding clap of thunder that set the captain’s ears ringing and shook the bridge like a raft adrift upon a surging sea. “Captain,” Data stated with admirable composure, “external sensors report increased tachyon radiation against our deflector shields, approximately 69.584 rems along the berthold scale and rising.”
“Thank you, Mr. Data,” Picard acknowledged, scowling. The Calamarain did not emit tachyons solely to communicate, he knew; they employed the faster-than-light particles as weapons as well, effective against both organic and inorganic matter. Only the ship’s crumbling shields protected the crew and the Enterprise from the deadly emissions, but for how much longer?
He glanced back over his shoulder at the lighted schematic of the Enterprise-E mounted on the wall directly behind him. Blinking amber lights indicated malfunctions on practically every one of the ship’s twenty-four decks. If only the cutaway diagram could show him where Q and 0 were…!
Orange and yellow sparks cascaded from the secondary aft science station. “Not again!” Barclay yelped, backing off from the console in a hurry. He cast a frustrated glance at the engineering station a few posts away, its surface already charred and melted from a previous conflagration. “Science Two inoperative,” he reported dutifully.
“Take over at environment,” Picard instructed briskly, filling the position left vacant when Lieutenant Yang took the conn. Obviously, he needed to end this pointless conflict with the Calamarain soon, while there was a bridge left from which to run the Enterprise.
It’s that old business with Q, Picard realized, silently signaling Data to deactivate the translator for a moment. The Calamarain don’t believe us because we appeared to take Q’s side when they came after him nearly a decade ago. He didn’t regret saving Q from a summary execution on that occasion—at least not entirely—but it didn’t make winning the cloud-beings’ trust any easier. Some kind of gesture of good faith is required, Picard thought. The burden of proof is upon the Enterprise. We need to trust them before they can trust us.
“Ensign Berglund, prepare to lower shields at my command.”
“Lower?” Her face blanched, but she quickly composed herself. “I mean, yes, sir.”
“Captain,” Data inquired evenly. Years of service under Picard made him more comfortable addressing Picard than the ensign was. “Are you sure that is wise, sir?”
“It may be our only chance, Mr. Data,” Picard said. Out of habit, he tugged his jacket into place before signaling Data to resume the transmission. “Captain Picard to the Calamarain, in memory of the Coulalakritous.” The ancient name had made an impact upon the Calamarain before; it couldn’t hurt to invoke it again. “To prove that we mean you no harm, and that we sincerely seek peaceful cooperation with your people during the present crisis, I am prepared to lower our defenses. Please accept this gesture in the spirit in which it is intended, and refrain from taking violent action against us until we have had the opportunity to speak further.”
Do the Calamarain even comprehend the concept of a truce? The Coulalakritous that Picard observed in the past had impressed him as a peaceful people, not a warlike or predatory species, although who knew how much their culture and psychology might have changed over the course of a million years? I guess we’re about to find out, he thought. “Ensign Berglund, lower shields.”
“Yes, sir,” she said with a gulp. For a moment, he was almost relieved that Lieutenant Leyoro was confined to sickbay. The Angosian security chief would have surely objected strenuously to this particular tactic. And she might well have been right, he conceded.
Picard held his breath, his body as tense as an engaged warp coil, as Berglund carried out his command. The first evidence of its effects came when the brilliant blue flashes of the stressed shields vanished from the turbulent display of churning clouds and jagged thunderbolts upon the main viewer. He braced himself for everything from a catastrophic hull breach to the searing pain of radiation burns, but all that greeted his expectant senses was the muted rumbling of the storm as it seemed to hold back the full force of its fury. Yes, he thought, elated. The Calamarain were honoring the truce!
/> “Captain, look!” Ensign Berglund called out. She pointed at the ceiling above the command area, where a glowing mist was phasing through the solid duranium over Picard’s head. He rose from his chair, his neck craned back, watching in wonder as what appeared to be an actual portion of the Calamarain entered the confines of the bridge. “Er, is this what you were expecting, Captain?” Berglund asked.
“Not exactly,” Picard admitted, although this physical manifestation was not entirely without precedent. Ten years ago, during their previous encounter with the Calamarain, a segment of the gaseous mass had infiltrated the Enterprise in search of Q. Welcome aboard, he thought wryly.
The shimmering cloud, roughly the size of an adult Horta, descended from the ceiling and began to circulate around the bridge, inspecting its surroundings with evident purpose and curiosity. Lieutenant Barclay and the other officers were quick to make way for the traveling cloud, being careful to give it a wide berth, although the security officer stationed between the port and starboard turbolifts, Ensign Plummer, looked to Picard for guidance. “Shall I attempt to apprehend the intruder, Captain?”
Picard shook his head. He wasn’t even sure how to approach the amorphous entity, let alone take it prisoner. “I believe we should think of this as more of an envoy than an intruder,” he declared. The cloud completed its circuit of the bridge, then began to hover over the mangled engineering station, emitting a steady hum that reminded Picard of the honeybees in his father’s vineyards. “Data, can we communicate with the entity at this proximity?”
“Just a moment, Captain,” the android replied. His fingers moved across the operations panel faster than Picard’s eyes could follow. “There,” he announced less than five seconds later. “The revised algorithms, along with a directive to detect and produce low-intensity tachyon bursts via the inertial dampers, has been downloaded into the primary translation system linked to your combadge. That should suffice, sir, within a 94.659 percent range of accuracy.” He shrugged sheepishly. “My apologies, Captain. It was the best I could accomplish under such rigorous time constraints.”
Give Data a couple more hours, Picard, and he could probably compose sonnets in Calamarain. “This will do, Mr. Data. Thank you.” He approached the iridescent cloud, being careful not to make any movements, sudden or otherwise, that might be construed as hostile. He felt a tingling sensation, like static electricity, upon his hands and face as he neared the representative from the Calamarain. Do they have individual names, he wondered, or even a singular noun?
“Greetings,” he said. “Welcome to the Enterprise. I am Captain Jean-Luc Picard.” Ordinarily, he would offer a hand in friendship but that hardly seemed appropriate given the complete absence of anything resembling an appendage. The vaporous substance of the entity appeared completely undifferentiated; he couldn’t begin to tell where its head was, if that term had any meaning at all to the Calamarain. Hard to imagine, he thought, that Q and I actually assumed the form of the Coulalakritous during our voyage through the past. Already, the experience seemed like a half-remembered dream; his human brain had never been meant to retain the experience of existing as an intelligent gas.
“I am/are of the Calamarain.” The voice emerged from Picard’s combadge, sounding identical to the inflectionless tones the Calamarain as a whole had employed. “State/propose your intentions/desires.”
Small talk was not on the itinerary, it seemed. “The entity called 0, who injured the Coulalakritous in the past, is aboard this vessel,” Picard explained. “Can you help us subdue him before he does more harm?”
The cloud hummed to itself for several seconds before replying: “Negative/ never. Chaos is too ascendant/hazardous. Condemned/congealed the Coulalakritous. I/we cannot oppose again/ever.”
Picard thought he was starting to get a feel for the Calamarain’s bizarre syntax, but he didn’t like what he believed he was hearing. Although perfectly willing to defend the galactic barrier or punish the Enterprise for its perceived transgressions, it appeared the cloud entities were not willing to confront 0 directly. Were they merely made fearful by ancestral memories of their defeat and persecution in the distant past, or was 0 truly that much more powerful than the Calamarain? If so, then all their struggles might be in vain.
“Captain,” Data spoke up. “Forgive me for interrupting, but I believe I may have located a clue to the location of either Q or 0.”
“Yes?” Picard asked. He recalled that he had asked Data to monitor power consumption throughout the ship in hopes of keeping track of 0’s pursuit of Q. He considered deactivating the Universal Translator for this discussion, but reconsidered. Let the Calamarain see and hear what we are doing to cope with the danger. Perhaps it would inspire them to action of their own. I might even settle for a useful suggestion or two, he thought.
“The EPS power grid indicates that Holodeck Seven is in use,” Data reported. He turned from his display console to face Picard. “I find this unusual during a state of red alert.”
So did Picard. That must be Q and 0, he felt convinced. Who else would be playing games in a holodeck in the middle of a galactic emergency? “Excellent work, Mr. Data. I think you may be on to something.” He spun around to face the envoy from the Calamarain, a strategy for survival coming together in his mind. It would take all his diplomatic skills to pull it off, but maybe there was a way to put 0 back in the bottle again, before he could enlist The One to his cause once more.
“Listen to me,” he told the swirling cloud of ionized plasma, standing so close to the radiant entity that the minuscule hairs on the back of his hands stood at attention. “I know that 0 hurt you badly long ago, but maybe you don’t have to fight him alone….”
Sixteen
“Dad?”
Milo hoped that he was dreaming, that he hadn’t really woken up yet, but knew in his heart that this nightmare was all too real. That really was his father, his eyes glowing like a Tholian, getting ready to perform some kind of experiment on a baby in a transparent bubble. Looking more closely, he recognized the baby as that weird Q kid who had popped into the holodeck during their first night aboard the Enterprise. A barely healed scab on his soul tore open again as he remembered how impressed his father had been by the Q baby, even as he ignored both him and Kinya. Figures, he thought. Even with all that had happened—cloud monsters and the barrier and everything—that hadn’t changed. Their father still cared about everything except his own children.
“Milo, please come away from there,” a voice said behind him. “It’s not safe.” Counselor Troi placed her hands gently upon his shoulders and tried to pull him away from the doorway. He was very relieved to see that his father hadn’t killed her after all, but he didn’t want to be shuffled off to some holographic daycare center again. His father had gone crazy, it looked like, and Milo had to find out what was going to happen next, no matter what. “Please, Milo.” The counselor tugged insistently. “Come with me.”
“No,” he said emphatically and, to his surprise, her hands sprang away from him as if burned. Did I do that? he thought, astounded. It sort of felt like he did; right when she let go of him he sensed something flow out of him. Like telepathy, but stronger. He pushed her away, using a muscle in his head he hadn’t even known was there before.
Funny thing, though. Counselor Troi didn’t look half as surprised as he was. Scared, yes, worried, sure, but not surprised. He looked into her mind to find out why and, sure enough, there it was. The barrier. The galactic barrier had given him amazing new powers, just like it had his father.
Does this mean Dad’s not dying anymore? he wondered. He didn’t like the image of himself he saw in the counselor’s thoughts, with the creepy glowing eyes and all, but maybe it would be okay if this meant that his father had been cured of Iverson’s disease. Maybe their family could finally get back to normal, sort of.
The way his father was acting, though, that didn’t seem likely. He had glanced in Milo’s direction when he first showed up, and
for a second Milo had thought he saw a trace of real live interest, and maybe even a glint of approval, in his father’s spooky new eyes, but then he went right back to staring at the Q baby like it was the Sacred Chalice of Rixx or something. “Beginning environmental testing,” he droned aloud, more boring science stuff like always. “Introducing concentrated zenite gas into observation chamber….”
Zenite? Milo didn’t get it. That stuff caused brain damage, didn’t it? He watched in horrified fascination as a gray mist began to fill the transparent dome containing the Q baby. What was the point of this? Milo had read all his father’s scientific treatises, about the barrier and wormholes and such, and he didn’t remember anything about testing zenite gas on alien babies. He felt faintly sick to his stomach.
The baby’s mother, whom Milo spotted on the other side of the dome, looked more than nauseated; she looked positively crazed with fear. Tears ran down her cheeks and her eyes were wild. From out of nowhere, she somehow produced the largest phaser rifle Milo had ever seen and fired it directly at his father.
“No!” Milo cried out, but his father just looked annoyed. With a wave of his hand, he created a vortex in the air that absorbed the phaser beam before it reached him. Milo’s panicked shout attracted his father’s attention, though. He looked away from the Q baby to peer at his own son with new eyes. In more ways than one, Milo thought.
Meanwhile, the gray fumes reached the baby’s nostrils. He wrinkled his nose and made a face. Then he stomped his feet and the toxic smoke turned into a miniature rainbow that dissolved into a hundred prismatic floating crystals before vanishing entirely. “Oh, good boy, q!” his mother gasped in relief, while stubbornly trying to shoot past the vortex protecting Milo’s father. She fired high and low and even attempted a ricochet or two, but his father managed to keep the vortex between himself and the business end of the crimson phaser beam. “That’s a very good boy!”