Star Trek: The Q Continuum (57 page)

To his dismay, his father had to think about it. “Milo?” he murmured, and for a second he sounded like the father Milo remembered, even with the weird white eyes. “My son?” Then all the emotion drained from his face and, his neck turning stiffly like a badly programmed hologram, he looked down at the baby in the bubble instead. “No,” he said mechanically. “This is the child. The child of Q and Q. The child of the future of the evolution of the mind….” A padd materialized in his hand, and he began tapping out notes, as if neither Milo nor the baby’s mother were even there anymore. “Appendix: Some Thoughts on the Relationship Between Advanced Consciousness and Corporeal Manifestation. To be completed following eventual dissection of subject. Compare and contrast to Vulcan concept of
katra
and synaptic pattern displacement in postsomatic organisms….”

Milo’s jaw dropped open as a pain as large as Betazed itself crushed his heart. This was the ultimate betrayal. Just when it looked like his father had finally started caring about him again, just when Milo had let himself hope that the bad times and the loneliness were over, Lem Faal chose the Q baby—and some stupid experiment—over the life of his own son! Milo slumped against the woman behind him, held up by the Tholian webbing stretched tightly against him. As he gave up on his father, the web Milo had created, with the help and encouragement of that same false father, began to fade away, as did the two tiny Tholian ships. Despite the absence of the web, Milo didn’t even try to break away from the woman’s grip.
Go ahead and kill me,
he thought bitterly.
I don’t care anymore.

Instead she shoved him away without a second’s thought. “Go,” she said brusquely, like she had no more use for him. Milo stumbled across the floor, dazed and uncertain. His legs felt hollow and limp, and he had to grab on to the edge of a tripod-mounted scanner several centimeters taller than he was. Dr. Crusher hurried around the back of the laboratory to throw an arm around him and guide him toward the door. The doctor’s efforts barely registered on him; Milo was too numb to notice.
Now what do I do?
he thought, hurt and relieved and bewildered all at the same time.

The baby’s mother had no answers from him. Freed from the scale-model Tholian web, she had gone straight to the transparent dome imprisoning her son. “Hang on, little q,” she cooed, trying to reassure the anxious toddler. Her voice cracked as she spoke. “Everything will be okay. Mommy will get you out of there somehow.”

“Come along, Milo,” Dr. Crusher whispered in his ear. “You don’t have to stay here any longer.”

Milo dragged his feet, unable to look away from the heartbreaking spectacle going on only a few steps away.

The Q baby bounced up and down inside the bubble, reaching out for his mother, his tiny hands pressed against the inner surface of the dome. He looked confused and frightened, mystified by the unyielding barrier between him and his mother. “Mommy?” he cried. “Mommy?”

A new pang stabbed Milo’s battered emotions. At least the Q baby, whatever it was and whyever his father wanted it, knew that his parent loved him and wanted to protect him, which was more than Milo could say. He couldn’t bear to watch them anymore.
I don’t care if they’re not what they appear,
he decided.
A baby deserves a mother who cares about him.

“I’ll help you,” he blurted.

The doctor tugged on his arm gently. “Milo, I don’t think this is a good idea. Just come with me.”

Milo wasn’t listening. Shaking off her arm, he ran up to the woman who had, only moments ago, threatened to kill him. “Let me help you. You and me. Two against one. Against
him.”
The aching pain in his chest turned into anger and determination. He couldn’t let his dad wreck
another
family. “Let’s get your baby out of there.”

The woman looked down at him, anxiety and fear giving way to hope in her eyes. She scrutinized Milo from top to bottom, weighing his sincerity, then nodded her head. “Yes,” she said hoarsely. “I’ll try anything.”

His father was still tapping notes onto his padd, muttering to himself in what Milo’s mother used to call “academese.” He inspected the readout on one of the mounted display screens, then keyed the data into his notes. “The subspace dimensions of the subject are highly variable, with little apparent correlation to dimensions of humanoid manifestation. Disparate suggests further lines of inquiry along fourth-dimensional axis….”

“Stop it, Dad!” Milo shouted as loud as he could, using his mouth as well as his mind. No matter what happened next, he was not going to let his father ignore him anymore. “It’s over now. All of it.”

Lem Faal looked up in surprise from his padd. “Milo?” He spotted the baby’s mother standing beside Milo. “What is that irrelevant Q doing free again? I thought I told you to keep her under control.”

Don’t tell me what to do,
Milo thought.
You don’t have the right.
The anger poured out of Milo then. He couldn’t have held it back if he tried. Months of pain and resentment and crushed feelings hit Lem Faal like the cloud monsters had hit the
Enterprise
before, over and over again. Lem Faal staggered backward, the padd with his ever-so-important notes crashing to the floor. The mother Q added her anger to Milo’s, and it felt cleaner, purer than his father’s contaminated thoughts had been. Between the mother’s relentless need to rescue her child, and Milo’s own resolve to end his father’s madness, the power they wielded had become an irresistible force. Lem Faal tried to defend himself, vortexes and forcefields and flickering energy pulses springing into existence only to be blown away like cobwebs in a hurricane. He was driven back into a wall of monitors, the manifestations of his power evaporating like mirages. “Mind over matter,” he babbled incoherently. “Mind over…Milo?”

All at once, the alien glow in his father’s eyes was gone. He looked confused and disoriented, clutching his chest as he gasped for breath, which whistled plaintively through lungs that sounded weak and clotted. “Where is your mother, Milo?” he asked. “Where’s Shozana?”

He sagged to his knees, then collapsed face-first onto the floor. “About time,” the mother Q said without a trace of compassion, “although I doubt that was all of him. That was just a little piece of 0 that found a bit of power to nest in.” She spun around and reached out for the transparent dome. This time no forcefield deterred her and the dome crumbled to dust at her slightest touch. Within a second, she had her baby clutched to her chest, stroking his head while she cooed in its ear. “My poor little q! My poor, brave little q!”

Now that it was over, his father crumpled upon the floor, Milo felt thoroughly drained.
At least it’s finally over,
he thought.
At last.
He felt like he had lost his real father months ago, the same time he lost his mother. The rest was just a bad emptiness that went on much too long. A little piece of zero, like the mother Q said. A living, breathing hole where a father should have been. He dissolved the forcefield over the entrance and Commander Riker and Counselor Troi rushed into the children’s ward. Phaser in hand, the commander knelt to check on his father while Counselor Troi squeezed Milo’s hand in hers. “Let’s go see your sister, Milo,” she said softly, and this time he didn’t push her away.

“You really scared me there for a moment or two,” Crusher said to the female Q, who continued to stroke and comfort her child. The doctor felt thankful things had turned out as well as they had, thanks to young Milo. “When you threatened to kill Faal’s son, I wasn’t sure you were bluffing. Remind me not to invite you to our weekly poker game.”

“Actually, I prefer contract bridge,” the female Q replied, regaining some of her previous hauteur now that the worse was over. She beamed at her smiling child, wiping away the tearstains on his cheeks. Crusher thought q looked none the worse for his captivity.
Never underestimate the natural resilience of children,
she thought.
Especially a Q child.
“Forgive me if I don’t stay to tidy up,” the Q continued, looking around at the biomedical chamber of horrors that Faal had transformed the pediatric unit into, “but I have a rather important errand to run.”

“What about him?” Riker asked gruffly, calling the Q’s attention to the prone figure upon the floor. “Are you quite sure he’s powerless now?”

“A good point,” the Q conceded. Her eyes narrowed as she gave the problem of Faal a moment’s thought. Then a very Q-like smirk appeared on her face, preceding a white flash that lit up the ward for a single heartbeat.

When the light faded, the containment chamber had been restored, but now it was Lem Faal, curled into a fetal position, who was confined within the clear dome. “That should hold him for the time being,” the female Q declared. “Do feel free to run any tests you choose on him. The more painful the better.”

And then both she and q were gone, leaving Riker and Crusher alone in the pediatric unit. Beverly hoped that Jean-Luc and the others were faring as well with the Calamarain and that unknown intruder. One more thing puzzled her as well.

What kind of errand does the female Q have in mind?

“Ugh. What a revolting sensation.”

Q’s skin still itched from his emergency beam-out; he’d forgotten just how crudely
tactile
primitive matter transporters could be. Still, it beat working up a sweat, he supposed. If he never saw another starship corridor or Jefferies tube for another hundred million years, it would still be too soon.

Nevertheless, here he was. Holodeck 7. Hundreds of alternative environments, and potential hiding places, available at his command. The next best thing to using his Q powers.
Quite ingenious,
he congratulated himself. 0 may have forced Q into this deadly game, but Q wasn’t about to make it easy for him.

At the moment, of course, the holodeck was just a big, empty room waiting to be filled with three-dimensional illusions. A stark yellow grid pattern was laid out on the walls, floor, and ceiling, which were a singularly uninteresting shade of black. A pair of red double doors, surrounded by a streamlined archway that looked evocatively like a theatrical proscenium, marked the entrance of the holodeck for those who actually cared to enter via their feet.
Easier said than done,
Q thought ruefully, contemplating the unwieldy shackles about his ankle. He had hoped the transporter would leave the leg irons behind, but 0 had made them more stubborn than that.
I should have expected as much, but who’d expect a lunatic to pay such attention to detail?

In its bare simplicity, the default version of the holodeck was about the least promising hiding place one could imagine.
But just give a few moments at those controls,
Q gloated,
and it will be a different story.

“All right then,” he addressed the archway, “show me the specialties of the house.”

The holodeck controls, which had been programmed to respond to a wide variety of verbal commands, complied by displaying a menu of available programs on a lighted monitor embedded in the right side of the proscenium. He scrolled through the various options, not quite certain what he was looking for, but confident that he would know it when he saw it.

Aikido.
Too strenuous,
he decided.

Altonian Brain Teaser.
Meditation was not exactly what he had in mind.

Ancient West.
Too rustic, not to mention conducive to shoot-outs.

Ballroom Dancing.
Crusher’s favorite, no doubt.

Bat’leth
Practice.
Left behind by the redoubtable Worf?

Barclay 1-75.
Too numerous to choose from.

Bridge Officer Examination.
Please!

Champs Élysées.
Too French.

Camp Khitomer
.
Too Klingon.

Christmas Carol, A.
He’d spent quite enough time haunting the shadows of the past, thank yo very much!

Q scrolled through the menu faster, glancing nervously over his shoulder. As brilliant as it was, his transporter trick wasn’t going to throw 0 off the trail indefinitely. He might be crazy as a chronal conundrum, but his former mentor had an undeniable talent for showing up precisely where he was least wanted. He raced through the vast array of selections at a feverish clip, examining and discarding options as fast as the display could produce them.
Denubian Alps.
No.
Fly Fishing.
No.
Henry V.
No.
Klingon Calisthenics.
God, no.
Lake Cataria
….

What about that delightfully seedy waterfront dive?
he wondered.
With all that cheap hired muscle to throw at 0?
No, wait, that was on Janeway’s ship. Would he ever have a chance to drop by
Voyager
again? Only if Picard came through, as was devoutly to be wished.

Moonlight on the Beach.
No.
Orient Express.
No.
Rock Climbing.
No.
Romulan Firefalls.
No.
Tactical Simulation.
No.

Q was running out of time and hope when finally, near the end of the alphabetical listing, he spotted something that might suit his present purposes.

The Tempest.
From Picard’s beloved Bard, no less. Magic, trickery, and deferred revenge, plus an entire enchanted isle on which to elude 0. It was as close to perfect as he was going to find, particularly under the circumstances. Now if he could just call up the program before 0 arrived on the scene…!

The sound of a heavy object whistling through the air alerted Q only seconds before a spiked mace would have collided with his skull. Ducking just in time, he pivoted around to see 0 just a few paces away, his archaic pistol aimed at Q once more. “You can’t trick a trickster, Q. Tricky, trickier, trickiest. A trick in a nick gives a bit of a kick.”

His maniacal blue eyes searched their surroundings. “What’s this, Q? This is what? Some kind of aboriginal game room? Very fitting. Fit, fitter, fittest. Good of you to get into the spirit of the thing; too bad the game’s almost gone.” He grabbed Q’s arm to keep him from teleporting away, then cocked his revolver. Fingernails as long as knives dug into Q’s wrist. “Any last words, Q? Better make them good ones.”

“Yes,” Q answered. “Begin program. Act One, Scene One.”

The quiet of the holodeck became at once a scene of utter chaos. Q and 0 stood upon the rolling deck of a ship at sea, caught in the fury of a sudden squall. Sheets of cold rain pelted both ship and passenger alike. Sailors and civilians, the latter clad in drenched royal finery, ran about the deck in a frenzy of activity, shouting commands and warnings and heated imprecations at each other. The sky was dark with stormy clouds, not unlike the Calamarain, and the crash of white-capped waves competed with the howl of the wind and the rumble of thunder to drown out pages’ worth of theatrical dialogue. Jagged tines of lightning stabbed at the mast and mainsails, threatening to set the tempest-tossed vessel ablaze. “Hang, cur!” a villainous-looking boatswain managed to bellow above the din, directing his tirade at one of the bedraggled noblemen. “Hang, you whoreson, insolent noisemaker!”

I couldn’t have put it better myself,
Q thought. As anticipated, the abrupt change in venue, not to mention the general tumult, distracted 0 sufficiently that Q was able to yank his arm free from an ectoplasmic tentacle and rush across the pitching, rain-soaked deck to put a sturdy holographic mast between himself and 0’s primed firearm.
Thank you, Willie,
he thought,
for an effectively over-the-top opening.
Searching the horizon in every direction, using the electrical glare of a thunderbolt to dispel the worst of the gloom, Q spotted, right on schedule, a verdant island less than a kilometer away, its leafy greenery offering both sanctuary and, more importantly, seclusion. From 0, as opposed to the storm.

“Q! Tricky, tricky Q!” 0 limped after Q, his mangled foot equitably slowing the vengeful madman as much as Q’s fetters impeded his escape. He fired his revolver, taking a chip out of the wooden rail beside Q. “Take your tricks to a watery grave, Q!”

Exit, stage right,
Q decided, tossing himself over the rail into the surging, frothing sea. For a simulacrum created by shaped forcefields and holographic images, the water was convincingly cold and wet. Almost too convincing, in fact; Q swallowed several mouthfuls of holographic brine before he managed to kick his way to the surface, his head emerging amid a flurry of waves and wind. His heavy leg irons hardly helped him keep afloat, but he trusted that Prospero’s magic (and the dictates of the plot) would carry him safely to shore.

Another gunshot, splashing into the water only centimeters from his head, convinced him to give the program a hand by striking out for the island as quickly as a modified breast stroke would carry him. He was sorely tempted to turn himself into a dolphin or a Markoffian sea lizard, but he might just as well fire off signal flares announcing his precise location to his pursuer. There was nothing to be done except paddle along in a humanoid form rendered unfit for this pseudo-environment by several million years of terrestrial evolution.
I tried to tell them that leaving the ocean for the land was a huge mistake, but did they listen to me? Of course not.

It took longer than he would have preferred, and his arms would have ached had he been genuinely mortal, but time and tide eventually deposited him on a sandy beach unmarred by any trace of human habitation. Climbing to his feet, he brushed the wet sand from the front of his soggy uniform, while a chill slurry of sand and seawater streamed from his hair, running down the back of his neck.
Brrr!
Looking out over the sea, he saw the last vestiges of the squall driving the abandoned ship to a waiting harbor; in theory, the rest of the dramatis personae would be washing ashore anytime now.

Best to get going,
he realized. Having not instructed the computer to cast him in any particular role, he remained an extraneous element in this
Tempest,
un-obliged to take part in the actual narrative. Still, there was no reason 0 couldn’t race ahead of the plot as well, once his scattered mind came to grips with the radically revised playing field. Q wanted to be safely lost in the jungle before 0 set foot on the island.

Facing the sea, across a perilously exposed expanse of sand, the jungle awaited. A thick growth of towering mangrove and banyan trees offered shelter and shadows in which to hide, preceded by hedges of high grass and leafy ferns. He bolted for the overgrown foliage, wishing there were time to erase the sandy footprints he was inevitably leaving in his wake.
I could really use a bushy tail right now,
he thought.

“Q!” a demented voice cried out behind him. “All ashore who’s dying ashore!” Q peeked back over his shoulder to see 0 striding out of the surf, his stringy hair plastered to his skull. He looked as though he had walked across the sea bottom all the way from the stormswept brigantine.
Why didn’t I think of that?
Q thought, snapping his fingers.
Because it didn’t follow the logic of the play?

Another instance where 0’s lunacy, and propensity for cheating, gave him the advantage.
I’m going to have to think a lot crazier if I’m going to beat him at his own game.

A flag upon a golden pole materialized at the end of 0’s upper right tentacle, which jabbed the bottom of the pole into the sand. “I claim this isle in the name of 0 the First!” he proclaimed grandly. The emblem on the flag was a numeral zero that looked like it had been scrawled in crayon, or maybe blood, by either a hyperactive three-year-old or a fugitive from an asylum. Q leaned strongly toward the latter.

“What shall I name this serene and sandy shore?” Q asked aloud. “Q’s End? Q-Fall? Q’s Just Deserts?” He laughed raucously. “Too bad this isn’t a
deserts
island!”

I still have a chance,
Q thought. The outer fringe of the jungle was only a few meters away. With little to lose, he used his power to add wings to his feet. Literally. Two pairs of feathered pinions, chafing slightly at the edges of his shackles, propelled him into the sylvan sanctuary at hummingbird speed. A razor-edged boomerang chased him into the trees, slicing off the tip of an emerald frond before returning to 0’s waiting tentacle. “Cheater!” 0 shouted angrily. “Cheat and charlatan! Cheat, cheating, cheater!”

Now there’s the singularity calling the neutron star black,
Q thought as he lost himself in the beckoning wilderness. He leaped over gnarled roots and trickling streams, heading ever deeper into the lush holographic scenery. He couldn’t slow down to get some bearings because he could hear 0 crashing through the underbrush behind him, hacking at hanging vines and branches with a machete in each hand and swinging tentacle. “Run, Q, run!” he hollered. “Rotting bones in the jungle are as good as a burial at sea any day. Any day!”

Not exactly Shakespeare,
Q thought critically, but the intent was clear enough.

The atmosphere within the tropical forest was hot, humid, and redolent of jungle violets. A dense, green canopy stretched overhead, letting through only shreds of artificial sunlight. Banyan and mangrove, mahogany and teak formed an arboreal maze through which Q ducked and weaved, changing course at random while trying to avoid running into any low-hanging boughs. Thankfully, this unnatural simulation of nature had been designed for relatively easy navigation by culture-seeking Starfleet drones already wrestling with the pitfalls and perplexities of iambic pentameter, so it was not nearly as clotted with underbrush and difficult to traverse as a real jungle would be. Thus, Q was able to make fairly good time, even hobbled by his increasingly aggravating leg irons; alas, the same applied to 0, although Q hoped that the deranged entity was having so much fun hacking and slashing his way through defenseless foliage that he might not realize such strenuous exertions were not entirely necessary.
This is a fantastical romance,
he thought caustically, deriving some small pleasure from his opponent’s inferior knowledge of earthly literature,
not a quest for King Solomon’s Mines!

They were not entirely alone within this fictional forest. Monkeys chattered in the treetops while small animals of undetermined nature rustled through knee-deep ferns and creepers. Sometimes he heard the whispered conversation of unseen fairies and spirits, or ran to the lilting music of invisible pipes and drums.
“The isle is full of noises,” indeed,
Q thought. Once he even glimpsed a misshapen humanoid figure, shaggy of hide and webbed of hand and foot, who loped sullenly through the jungle, muttering to himself in verse. Caught up in his own predestined plotline, Caliban remained unaware of Q’s uncanonical presence.

It was rather charming, in a lowbrow human sort of way. Q found it encouraging that Jean-Luc Picard, he of the somber disposition and rigid decorum, could find value in something so thoroughly fanciful, and regretted that he was too busy fleeing for his life to fully soak up the atmosphere.
Maybe some other time.