Riker got it, untensing his aggressive stance only a little. A newly replicated combadge adorned his chest. “I see,” he said, glaring suspiciously at Q. “And the woman and child?”
“Q’s wife and heir.” Riker’s jaw dropped again, and Picard shook his head to discourage any further inquiries. “Don’t ask. I’ll explain later, if I can.” He turned and confronted the omnipotent trio. “Q?” he demanded.
Q, the usual Q, lowered his child to the floor and strolled toward Picard with a look of unapologetic assurance on his face. “I felt it was time for a change in venue,” he said, loudly enough for all to hear. Q glanced furtively at his mate, who was inspecting the aft engineering station, and whispered in Picard’s ear. “To be honest, that other place reeked too much of her.”
“Guinan?” Picard asked aloud. He found it hard to imagine that Q could truly be honest about anything.
“Don’t say that name!” Q hissed, but it was too late. The woman glowered at Q the second Picard mentioned the former hostess of Ten-Forward, then huffily turned her back on him. She took her son by the hand and took him on a tour of the bridge.
“I’m going to pay for that,” Q predicted mournfully, “and so will you—someday.”
Picard refused to waste a single brain cell worrying about Q’s domestic tranquillity. Perhaps Q had inadvertently done him a favor in returning them all to the bridge. The best thing he could do now was ignore Q’s attempts to distract him and get on with the business of running the Enterprise. He took his place in the captain’s chair and swiftly assessed the crew assignments. “Mr. Data, please relieve Ensign Stefano at Ops. Mr. La Forge, if you could arrange to send a repair crew to the lounge.”
“You needn’t bother, Captain,” the female Q commented. “Any and all damage has been undone. Your tribal watering hole has been restored to its pristine, if woefully primitive, condition.” As an afterthought, she lifted a hand and retrieved her pith helmet from the ether.
“Thank you,” Picard said grudgingly. Despite her condescending attitude, which seemed to go along with being a Q, he entertained the hope that this new entity might prove less immature than her mate. Heaven help us if she’s worse, he thought. “Never mind, Mr. La Forge.” He glanced at the chronometer, which read 0105. “You’re relieved from duty if you wish.”
“If it’s all the same to you,” Geordi said, crossing the bridge to the engineering station, “I think I’d rather stay here and keep an eye on things.”
Picard didn’t blame him. How often did they have three omnipotent beings dropping by for a visit? He considered summoning Counselor Troi to the bridge, then rejected the notion; Deanna’s empathic powers had never worked on Q and his ilk.
“Besides,” Geordi added, “there’s still plenty I can do here to get ready for the experiment.” He manipulated the controls at his station. “Data, let’s double-check to see if the parameters for the subspace matrix have been fully downloaded into the main computer.”
“Yes, Lieu—” Data began to answer, but Q interrupted, literally freezing the android in midsentence. He laid his hand on the flight controls and shook his head sadly.
“Jean-Luc, I’m very disappointed with you. I can’t help noticing that your little ship is still on course for what you ignorantly call the galactic barrier.” He sighed loudly and instantly traded places with Ensign Clarze at the conn. The displaced crewman stood in front of the main viewer, blinking and befuddled. “How about a little detour? I hear the Gamma Quadrant is lovely this time of year.” His fingers danced over the conn and the distant stars veered away on the screen. “We could take the scenic route.”
Picard didn’t know what indignity to protest first. Did Q really think he could cancel their mission just by silencing Data? Riker appeared more worried about the flight controls. He strode over to the conn and dropped a heavy hand on Q’s shoulder. “Get out of that seat, Q!”
“Overdosing on testosterone again, Number One,” he asked, not budging a centimeter, “or are you merely picking up the slack now that everyone’s favorite atavism, the redoubtable Worf, is gone?”
“I’m warning you, Q,” Riker said with emphasis. Picard admired his first officer’s nerve. Q had them hopelessly outmatched in raw power, but maybe Riker could prevail through sheer force of personality. Stranger things had happened.
“Oh, very well,” Q grumbled, rising from the chair. Riker nodded at Ensign Clarze, who gulped once, then resumed his place at the conn. “I hardly wanted to steer this pokey hulk for the rest of eternity.” He gave Riker a disgusted look. “I can’t believe I ever saw fit to offer you the powers of a Q.”
That piqued the other Q’s interest. “This is the one?” she asked, her mysterious grudge against Q and Guinan forgotten for the moment. She walked over and circled Riker, then placed her hand over her mouth and tried, not very successfully, to keep from laughing. The baby q mimicked his mother’s merriment. “Well, that would have certainly shaken up the Continuum. Small wonder they stripped you of your powers after that.”
“Don’t remind me,” he said sullenly. Caught up in their quarrel, neither Q seemed to notice as the Enterprise returned to its previous heading. Picard thanked providence for small favors, but his frown deepened as his gaze fell upon the frozen form of Data. The android officer remained immobile, his mouth open in silent reply to his captain’s inquiry.
“Q!” he barked, unwilling to let his first officer take on all the risks of defying Q.
“Yes?” the two elder Qs replied simultaneously.
Picard felt a headache coming on. “You,” he specified, pointing at his longtime nemesis. “Restore Mr. Data immediately.”
That Q glanced impatiently at the inert android, as though Data were a minor annoyance already dismissed from his mind. “Priorities please, Jean-Luc. We still haven’t settled this matter of the barrier.”
“Might I remind you, Q,” Picard observed, “that Mr. Data once saved your life, at considerable risk to his own existence.”
For once, Q looked vaguely taken aback. He gazed back at the android with a chastened expression. “But surely,” he blustered, “I have repaid that debt many times over with my invaluable services to this vessel.”
“Reasonable people might dispute that point,” Picard said dryly. He lifted his eyes to espy the female Q and her child. “Your family is here, Q. Is this really the example you wish to set for them?”
Q peeked back over his shoulder at the woman and the boy. His wife raised a curious eyebrow. The child sucked on his thumb, watching Q with awe and adoration.
“Fine!” he said indignantly. He pantomimed a pistol with his thumb and index finger and pointed it at Data’s head. “Bang.”
“—tenant,” Data finished, coming back to life. He paused and assumed a contemplative expression. “How unusual. There appears to be a discrepancy between my internal chronometer and the ship’s computer.” He surveyed the bridge until his gaze fell upon the party of Qs. “May I assume that one of our visitors is responsible?”
“Precisely so,” Picard confirmed, relieved that Data appeared to be back to normal. “Now then, Mr. Data, you were about to inform Mr. La Forge of the status of a particular computer program.”
“Really, Jean-Luc!” Q complained, storming up to the command area. “If I didn’t know better, I’d swear you were beginning to take me for granted.” He shook a warning finger at Picard. “You really shouldn’t do that, you know. You’re not the only Starfleet captain I can bestow my attentions on, in this or any other quadrant.”
What does he mean by that? Picard wondered, although he was far more concerned with the report from Data that Q seemed so determined to postpone. “I’m sure Captain Sisko would welcome a second round of fisticuffs,” he told Q, then turned his attention back to Data. “Please proceed with your report.”
Data eyed Q curiously, waiting for a second to see if the impertinent entity would interrupt him a third time, but Q seemed to have given up for the present.
Q leaned sideways against a nonexistent pillar, looking rather like a gravity-defying mime, and pouted silently.
“It appears that the program is showing a degree of calibration drift,” Data stated. “It is possible that an unknown fraction of the data may have been lost during the start-up routine.”
Picard paid little attention to the specifics of the problem, which Data and Geordi were surely capable of resolving, but found it eminently reassuring to hear the business of the ship proceeding despite the presence of their unwanted visitors. Displaying a similar hope that order had been restored, Riker took his place at the starboard auxiliary command station.
“Well,” Geordi replied to Data, “that explains the eight percent falloff in AFR ratios I keep seeing.” His artificial eyes zeroed in on the engineering monitor as he scratched his head. “There must be a problem in the diagnostic subroutines. Maybe we need to completely recalibrate.”
“Captain,” Leyoro spoke up, her face grim, “I have to protest any discussion of a top-secret mission in front of these unauthorized civilians.” She eyed the Q trio dubiously. “All details of a technological nature are strictly classified.”
“As if we would have any interest in your pathetic little scientific secrets,” Q said scornfully. “You might as well try to hide from us the secret of fire. Or maybe the wheel.”
“Wheel!” the baby q chirped, and began rotating slowly above the floor until his mother set him upright again. Thankfully, he was not inspired to summon fire.
“Your point is well taken, Lieutenant,” Picard said, sympathizing with Leyoro’s concerns; on one level, it felt more than a little strange to be conducting this discussion in front of a party of intruders. “But I’m afraid that Q is correct in this instance. Realistically, it is doubtful that the Federation possesses any technological secrets that the Q Continuum could possibly covet.” Besides, he admitted silently, there was little point in concealing their efforts; Q had proved time and time again that he was supremely capable of spying on them regardless of the time or place. “You may proceed with your work, gentlemen.”
“Must they?” Q asked peevishly. “It’s all academic anyway. There isn’t going to be an experiment.”
Geordi did his best to ignore Q. “Now I’m getting a drop-off in the triple-R output,” he informed Data. “We might have a bigger problem than the diagnostic subroutines.”
“Possibly,” Data conceded, “but it could simply be a transtator failure. That would also be consistent with calibration errors of this nature.”
“And so on and so on,” Q broke in, his voice dripping with boredom. He righted himself until he was perpendicular to the floor once more. “Are you done yet? We have infinitely more important matters to get back to.”
Q’s offspring, Picard noted, no matter how young he might actually be, seemed to possess a greater reserve of patience than his egomaniacal father. “Mr. Data,” he said, “I do not pretend to be intimately acquainted with the finer points of Professor Faal’s computer programs. Do you anticipate any difficulties working out these problems prior to our arrival at the barrier?”
“No, sir,” Data said. Fortunately, the android did not require sleep like the rest of them, although Data often chose to simulate a dormant state in order to further his exploration of humanity, so Picard had no doubt that Data would work through the night if necessary.
Q yawned, and not from fatigue. “Are we quite through with this dreary business?” he inquired. A nervous-looking Ensign Clarze, who was surely less than eager to be teleported away from his post again, kept his eyes determinedly focused on the screen ahead of him even as Q ambled back to the conn. “Then can I finally prevail upon you to abandon this monumentally misguided exercise? Leave the barrier alone. It is not for the likes of you to tamper with.”
Maybe it was exhaustion, maybe it was simply that he had reached his limit, but Picard had suddenly had enough of Q’s perpetual snideness and high-handed pronouncements. “Get this straight, Q. I take my orders from Starfleet and the United Federation of Planets, not from the Q Continuum and most especially not from you!”
Q recoiled from Picard’s vehemence. “Somebody woke up on the wrong side of the Borg this morning,” he sniffed. He raised his eyes unto heaven and struck a martyred pose. “Forgive him, Q, for he knows not what he says. I try to enlighten these poor mortals but their eyes are blind and their ears are deaf to my abundant wisdom.” He shrugged his shoulders, dropped his arms to his sides, and turned to his mate. “Honeybunch, you talk to him. Tell him I know what I’m talking about.”
The female Q was busy wiping her son’s nose, but she looked up long enough to fix her brown eyes on Picard and say, “He knows what he’s talking about, Captain.” She returned to her son and muttered under her breath, “If only he didn’t.”
“Big wall!” the toddler interjected, adding his own two cents’ worth. “Bad! Bad!” He stamped his tiny foot on the floor and the entire bridge lurched to starboard. Picard grabbed on to his armrests to keep from being thrown from the chair. Data padds and other loose instruments clattered to the floor. Riker stumbled forward, but managed to keep his footing. Baeta Leyoro swore under her breath and shot a murderous glare at Q and his family. Yellow alert lights flashed on automatically all around the bridge. An alarm sounded.
“Now, now,” the female Q cooed to her son. “Be gentle with the little spaceship. You don’t want to break it.” She patted the child on the head and he looked down at his feet sheepishly. Picard felt the Enterprise’s flight path stabilize.
He silenced the alarm and ended the yellow alert by pressing a control on his armrest. Although the crisis seemed to have passed, he was unnerved by this demonstration of the baby’s abilities. Suppose the child threw a real tantrum? Not even the entire fleet might be able to save them. “Q,” he began, addressing the male of the species, “perhaps there is a more suitable location for your son? Children do not belong on the bridge,” he said quite sincerely.
“Really?” Q asked. “You gave that insufferable Wesley the run of the place as I recall.” He stood on his tiptoes and peered over everyone’s heads, as if expecting to find young Wesley Crusher hidden behind a console. Then he lowered his soles to the floor and considered his son. Little q held on to his mother’s leg while watching the viewscreen through droopy eyelids. “Still, you may have a point,” Q told Picard. “He is looking a trifle bored.”
“———?” he said to his wife in a language that bore no resemblance to any tongue Picard had ever heard before, one so inhuman that even the Universal Translator was stumped.
“———,” she replied.
An instant later, the baby disappeared. Picard felt an incalculable sense of danger averted until a new suspicion entered his mind. “Q,” he asked warily, “where exactly did the child go?”
Q acted surprised by the question. “Why, Jean-Luc, I understand the Enterprise has excellent child-care facilities.”
He and the other Q vanished from sight.
Seven
Although entire families no longer lived permanently on the Starship Enterprise, Holodeck B could be converted into a children’s center to accommodate the offspring of the various diplomats, delegations, and refugees who often traveled aboard the ship. During such times, the holographic center was kept open twenty-four hours a day, to handle the varying circadian rhythms of each alien race as well as to allow for emergency situations. Since alien encounters and other crises could hardly be expected to occur only during school hours, there had to be some place where any mothers and fathers aboard the ship could safely stow their children during, say, a surprise Romulan attack. The last thing anyone wanted was visiting scientists or ambassadors who were unable to assist in an emergency because they couldn’t find a babysitter.
Ensign Percy Whitman, age twenty-five, didn’t mind working the graveyard shift at the children’s center. The Faal children were still living on Betazed time, according to which it was roughly the middle of the
afternoon, but they seemed well behaved and remarkably quiet. That’s the nice thing about telepathic kids, he thought. They can talk among themselves without disturbing anyone else. All of which gave him more time to compose his work-in-progress, a holonovel about a sensitive young artist who works nights at a kindergarten for nocturnal Heptarians until he is recruited by Starfleet Intelligence to infiltrate the Klingon High Command.
Tonight the writing was going unusually well. He was already up to Chapter Seven, where the hero, Whip Parsi, fights a duel to the death with the treacherous heir to a hopelessly corrupt Klingon household. “His mighty bat’leth sliced through the sultry night air, keening a song of vengeance, as Whip struck back with all the skill and fury of one born to battle,” he keyed into the padd on his desk. Yeah, he thought, transfixed by his own output, that’s great stuff. He’d work out the holographic animation later.
A squeal of high-pitched laughter yanked him away from his gripping saga. He looked up from the padd to check on his charges. Everything seemed in order: the two smaller children, roughly two years old in human terms, played happily on the carpeted floor, stacking sturdy durafoam blocks into lopsided piles that inevitably toppled over, while their eleven-year-old brother played a computer game in one of the cubicles at the back of the room. Childish watercolor paintings of stars and planets decorated the walls.
Another meter-high tower of multicolored blocks collapsed into rubble and the toddlers squealed once more. Nothing to be alarmed about here, Whitman thought. He started to go back to his masterpiece-in-the-making, then paused and scratched his head. Say, hadn’t there been only one little tyke before?
He put aside his personal padd and checked the attendance display on the center’s terminal. Let’s see… Kinya and Milo Faal. That was one all right, a little Betazoid girl and her older brother. He stood up behind the desk and checked out the smaller children again.