Star Trek: The Q Continuum (51 page)

“Dr. Crusher, come quickly!”

The holographic physician’s entreaty drew Beverly Crusher instantly to the biobed where Lieutenant Leyoro’s body rested within the protective embrace of the surgical support frame. She left Deanna Troi, freshly wakened from her cortically induced coma now that the
Enterprise
had left the barrier behind, to watch over the unconscious form of Milo Faal, while Nurse Ogawa supervised straightening up the disarray caused by Lem Faal during his telekinetic rampage.
Thank heaven no one was hurt seriously,
she thought, although the crazed and mutated scientist remained at large, and capable of most anything, or so it seemed.
It must have been the barrier,
she realized; somehow the awesome psionic energy of the galactic barrier had amplified the Betazoid’s already formidable mental gifts.
Was this what he was planning all along? No wonder he resisted all my efforts to protect him from the barrier.

Crusher pushed such speculations aside to concentrate on the patient at hand. “What is it?” she asked the EMH. Had Leyoro taken a turn for the worse? At a glance, her condition appeared unchanged.

“Look,” the hologram said, pointing at the monitor above the bed. “Her neurotransmitter levels are dropping dramatically.”

He was right. The activity within the unconscious officer’s brain was rapidly returning to normal. It was too early to predict what sort of neurological damage, if any, had already been done by her overstimulated synapses, but this was a very hopeful sign. “Did you do anything?” she asked the computer-generated doctor.

“I wish I could take the credit,” he admitted, “but I’m afraid not. I was simply monitoring her condition as you instructed.” He glanced past her at the ward beyond, where Alyssa Ogawa was retrieving the last of the fallen exoscalpels from the floor. Like everyone else in sickbay, Ogawa had removed her magnetic boots now that gravity had been restored. Another nurse was handing out newly replicated combadges. “What in the name of Starfleet medical protocols went on over there?” the EMH inquired, referring to Professor Faal’s spectacular escape. “My programming did not begin to prepare me for any events of that nature.”

“Join the club,” Crusher murmured, preferring to focus on Leyoro’s surprising recovery. What could have triggered this turnaround? The triclenidil, she wondered, or something else? Another thought occurred to her: Perhaps it was simply that the
Enterprise
had finally exited the galactic barrier? The removal of the barrier’s direct influence upon Leyoro’s artificially enhanced nervous system might account for the sudden diminishment of her symptoms.

“How is she doing, Beverly?” Deanna asked, joining her at Leyoro’s side. Crusher noted that Ogawa had taken over the watch on Milo.
Good,
she thought. She wanted to know the minute the boy showed signs of consciousness.

“She’s been through a rough time,” the doctor told Deanna. Although Leyoro’s brain was no longer in danger of burning itself out, the Angosian woman remained unconscious, her face immobile. “I can’t say yet when or if she will recover.”

Troi rested her hands gently upon the surgical support frame enclosing the stricken woman’s torso. The EMH stepped aside to give her a little more room. “I can barely sense her consciousness,” she said softly, “it’s so faint. But she’s in pain, terrible pain.”

Trusting the counselor’s empathic abilities implicitly, Crusher adjusted the dosage of analgesic being administered to Leyoro by the infusion system in the SSF. “That’s better,” Deanna reported a few moments later. She gazed at Leyoro’s comatose face. “I’ve barely had a chance to get to know her, and now this. It’s so tragic.”

“She might well pull through,” Crusher assured her. “I don’t approve of how the Angosian military tampered with her biology, but their goal was to produce extraordinarily strong and resilient individuals. Survivors.” She glanced up at the biobed display, glad to see that the patient’s neurotransmitter levels were practically back to normal. She made a mental note to access the medical archives of the Angosian veterans facility on Lunar V as soon as possible, although she doubted that anything in their records bore a close resemblance to what effect the galactic barrier could have on a humanoid brain. “We shouldn’t underestimate her innate stamina and recuperative powers.”

“Not to mention the considerable talents and medical expertise of certain attending physicians,” the EMH pointed out, leading Crusher to wonder briefly whether it was technically possible to turn down the volume on the hologram’s self-esteem. He was just a little too much like the real Dr. Lewis Zimmerman, whom she’d had the dubious pleasure of meeting a few years back when she’d temporarily taken charge of Starfleet Medical; his ego had required excess stroking as well, she recalled.
I’ll have to ask Data or Geordi about how to adjust the program.

“What about Milo?” she asked Deanna. “Were you able to sense anything?” Milo Faal had not stirred since his unconscious body had been brought to sickbay by Sonya Gomez and the others, although the psionic-energy readings in his youthful brain were scarily similar to those recorded in his father before Lem Faal fled sickbay amid a flurry of telekinetic violence.

Troi shook her head. “I’m very familiar with the ordinary telepathic abilities of full Betazoids—you’ve met my mother—but this is something new. I’ve never sensed anything like it. It’s like white noise. I can’t even sense his emotions anymore.”

Crusher frowned. This didn’t sound good. She had to worry if Milo would wake with the same astonishing—and dangerous—powers his father had displayed.
Just one more thing to agonize about,
she thought; it didn’t help that the eleven-year-old boy invariably reminded her of Wesley at that age.

How do I treat something like this?
she wondered.
I could accidentally do more harm than good.
She was starting to wish she had never heard of the galactic barrier.

“At least his younger sister is fine,” Crusher reflected. Little Kinya had come out of her artificial coma with no apparent side effects and was now napping quietly in the pediatric unit. Beverly wasn’t looking forward to trying to explain to the toddler what had happened to her father and brother. Part of her was still astounded that Lem Faal could just abandon his children like this, no matter what the barrier had done to his mind.
In a way,
she thought,
that’s even more unbelievable than his amazing new mental powers.

“Why don’t I check on little Kinya?” Deanna volunteered. Crusher recalled that the counselor had a Betazoid baby brother about the same age as Kinya Faal. “You have enough to keep an eye on here.”

“Thank you,” Crusher said, grateful for Troi’s assistance during this crisis. Both children were going to need plenty of counseling now that their father had apparently lost his mind. “That would be very helpful.”

Giving Leyoro one last look, Troi headed toward the emergency pediatric unit attached to the primary care ward. She had only been gone a few minutes, however, when a startled cry from Deanna electrified Crusher’s senses and sent her adrenaline rushing. Crusher raced into the children’s ward, Ogawa close behind her, to find Troi backed against a row of empty, child-sized biobeds, her hand over her heart. “I’m sorry, Beverly,” she stammered quickly, her face flushed, “but he appeared so quickly he caught me by surprise.”

Beverly didn’t have to ask whom she referred to. The source of the counselor’s startlement was readily apparent atop the counter beneath the pediatric supplies cupboard, his pint-sized legs dangling over the edge of the sleek metal counter. Little q was back, doubtless in search of yet another of Crusher’s prescription lollipops. His cherubic face looked more anxious than she had ever seen it before.

“Scared,” he confessed sheepishly, although of what the doctor couldn’t guess. A pudgy little hand reached out to her. “Yum-yum?”

Then the floor tilted forward violently….

At last,
Faal thought. Long-range sensors reported the birth and almost immediate collapse of the wormhole he had created. The transitory nature of its existence did not disturb him; he had not expected his wormhole to last any longer than the ones previously generated by Dr. Kahn and her colleagues. However short-lived, the quantum fluctuation had lasted long enough to serve its purpose—to break through the galactic barrier to the other side.
I did it,
he thought triumphantly.
It I did.
After endless months of planning and striving, after what felt like half a million years, he had succeeded at last.

Now he could turn his expanded mind to even loftier matters. For so long, he had been forced by the limitations of his treacherous flesh to fixate exclusively on one goal, compelled to achieve genuine immortality before death by disease claimed him forever. He had seldom been able to spare one precious moment contemplating what he could do once he attained that immortality. Now, all at once, he had the freedom to find a new purpose in existence, to expand his work to a whole new level of scientific inquiry.
I have evolved beyond mere physical matter. Now my mind can explore the full potential of mind itself….

The frightened mortals surrounding him, chattering anxiously and cluttering up Engineering, could not appreciate his triumph. They were too caught up in the anxiety and adrenaline generated by his takeover of Engineering, not to mention their foolish Starfleet rigmarole. Even now, Lieutenant La Forge sought to take control of the situation, despite the true blindness into which Faal had plunged him. “La Forge to bridge,” he reported, holding on to the tabletop display to keep himself oriented in the dark. “We need more security. Faal is free and dangerous.” He shouted a command to his engineering crew, as well as to the first security officers on the scene, whose phasers had proved useless against Faal’s inexplicable new powers. “Everyone else, stay away from Professor Faal. Keep at your posts. We still have a job to do!”

Daniel Sutter, a merely competent engineer in Faal’s opinion, tried to guide La Forge away. “Sir, you should be in sickbay.”

“No,” La Forge said passionately. “I’m not leaving Engineering in the hands of that menace. I don’t need my eyes to do my duty.”

Faal shook his head in bemusement.
Specks. They were nothing but specks.
Even now, the sightless engineer could not see past the petty responsibilities of his post, beyond some routine mechanical repairs. Scanning La Forge’s mind in an instant, Faal saw the entire infrastructure of the
Enterprise
laid out before him, from the replicator system to the warp engines themselves. Despite Faal’s historic triumph over the barrier, part of La Forge’s mind was still worrying about repairing a series of sundered thermal isolation struts, and the difficulties of realigning the off-axis field controller. Faal could have done so in an instant, simply by thinking of it, but why should he bother? He had transcended such mundane chores, even if La Forge and his equally shortsighted servitors had not.
The mind is all that matters now. My mind and the mind of one special child….

Yes, the child,
a voice echoed at the back of his mind, so persuasively that he could scarcely distinguish whether it was his own thought or another’s.
The child of Q and Q. The next stage in evolution, beyond the Q, beyond you….

“Beyond,” he breathed softly, recalling the miraculous infant he had briefly observed in the
Enterprise
’s holographic child-care facility. Had not the female Q boasted that her offspring represented a potential advance beyond even the considerable evolutionary development of the Q Continuum? What more suitable subject could he choose for his experiments now that he had transcended his own mortality, achieving a state of being that perhaps rivaled that of the Q themselves? Only he and he alone had the predestined combination of preternatural power and bold scientific imagination to correctly study the unique phenomenon that was the Q child under controlled and rigorous experimental conditions. He had the intellect. He had the ability.

Now all he needed was the child.

He reached out with his mind, searching the entire ship for any sign of the supremely talented toddler.
Where is the child? The child of the mind.
Somehow he knew, perhaps via that voice whispering constantly at the back of his mind, that Q and his family remained aboard the vessel, pursuing their own enigmatic agendas.
The cursed Q, the meddling Q.
All that power and knowledge, he thought rancorously, wasted on frivolous antics and diversions; Q was an embarrassment to immortals everywhere. Faal was surprised at the intensity of the animosity he now felt toward Q. The bitter resentment seemed to course through his soul as surely as the metaphysical might he had absorbed within the barrier.
Damn you, Q,
he cursed, railing against an entity he had scarcely encountered before.
You don’t deserve that child.

His natural telepathy amplified more than he could have ever possibly imagined, he scoured the ship from deck to deck without stirring from his workstation in Engineering. As La Forge and his fellow mortals watched him warily from what they hoped was a safe distance, he located his target in sickbay of all places.
Where Milo and Kinya are,
he recalled, feeling a momentary pang before forcibly shoving the thought away.
Never mind those children. Mind over matter. The child of the mind was all that mattered.
Funny, how his path kept returning to sickbay. What other proof did he require that his destiny was following some mysterious preordained pattern? It was his scientific duty to take custody of the Q child, no matter who might try to oppose him.

That’s right,
the voice seconded his resolve.
Test the tot. Test him to the breaking point, then probe and peruse the pieces. Test him till there’s nothing left of Q and Q….

The Betazoid scientist strode decisively, on strong and tireless legs, toward the exit. His work in Engineering was done. Now the future, in the unlikely form of a child, awaited him in sickbay.