SOON, HE CACKLED. SOONER. SOONEST.

    Behind the wall, he watched with keen anticipa-

tion as lesser life-forms, no more than a bug or a

wisp of smoke to him, buzzed about on the other

side. Only the wall, the wretched wall that had kept

him out for longer than his muddled memory

could even begin to encompass, kept him from

reaching forth and swatting both bug and smoke

away. Tendrils of his contorted consciousness ca-

pered spiderlike against the edge of the wail, scrap-

ing away at the boundaries of his banishment. He

couldn't touch the other side just yet, but he could

watch and wait and wonder about what he would

do when the wall, the wicked and wearying wall,

finally came down.

  Very soon, he singsonged, soon soon soon.

The wall would crumble. The voice had promised him

so, that teensy-tiny voice from the other side. It

was difficult to conceive how such a paltry piece of

protoplasm could possibly undo that which had

held him back for so long, but he had hope and

reason to believe. Already he sensed that the wall

was weaker than before, minute faults and fissures

undermining its primal, protracted permanence.

All it needed was one good push from the other

side and a gap would be formed, the gap he needed

to break through. And then... and then what time

has done to the galaxy will be nothing compared to

what I'll do to all those stars and planets and people.

He flexed his tendrils in his eagerness to be free

once more. Yes, that's right, all the things I'll do . . .

to Q and Q and Q.

    There was only one thing that worried him.

What if someone silenced the other voice before it

fulfilled its promise? And not just anyone someone,

but Q. That Q, the quisling Q, the Q who could

never, ever be trusted. I can smell you, Q. His

stench was all over the shiny silver bug on the other

side. It stank and perhaps could sting. Stink, stank,

sting, bee, he chanted to himself. You can't stop me.

Q can't escape me.

 Soon could not come soon enough ....

 

Chapter One

 

Ship's log, stardate 500146.3, First Officer

William T. Riker reporting.

 

    Captain Picard is missing, abducted by the

capricious entity known as Q. We can only

pray that Q will return the captain unharmed,

although time has taught us that Q is nothing

if not unpredictable.

    The captain's disappearance cannot have

come at a worse time, as the Enterprise is

under attack by the gaseous life-forms whom

Q calls the Calamarain. Although Lieutenant

Commander Data has succeeded in adapting

our Universal Translator to the Calamarain's

inhuman language, allowing us a degree of

communication with them, we have thus far

 failed to win their trust. They have rendered

 our warp engines inactive and will not permit

 us to retreat, so we must persuade them other-

 wise. Speed is imperative, as our time is run-

 ning out.

     To complicate matters, we have a number of

 potentially disruptive guests aboard the ship.

 Chief among them are a mysterious woman

 and boy who claim to be Q's mate and child.

 Like Q himself, these individuals treat the ship

 and its crew as mere toys for their amusement.

 Furthermore, they appear unwilling or unable

 to inform us where Q has taken Captain

 Picard.

    Equally uncooperative is Professor Lem

Faal, a distinguished Betazoid physicist,

whose ambitious attempt to breach the im-

mense energy barrier surrounding our galaxy

has been interrupted by the unexpected arri-

vals of both the Q family and the Calamarain.

Dying of an incurable disease, and obsessed

with completing his work in the time remain-

ing to him, Faal has vigorously challenged my

decision to abort the experiment in light of

the unanticipated dangers we now face. While

I sympathize with the man's plight, I cannot

allow his single-minded determination to en-

danger the ship further.

    Indeed, according to what we have gathered

from the Calamarain, our first effort to dare

the barrier was the very event that provoked

the Calamarain's wrath, thus threatening us

all with destruction ....

 

THE STORM RAGED AROUND THEM. From the bridge of

the Enterprise-E, Commander William Riker could

see the fury of the Calamarain on the forward

viewscreen. The massive plasma cloud that com-

prised the foe, and that now enclosed the entire

Sovereign-class starship, had grown increasingly

turbulent over the last few hours. The sentient,

ionized gases outside the ship churned and bil-

lowed upon the screen; it was like being trapped in

the center of the galaxy's biggest thunderhead.

Huge sonic explosions literally shook the floor

beneath his feet, while brilliant arcs of electrical

energy flashed throughout the roiling cloud, inter-

secting violently with their own diminished

shields. The distinctive blue flare of Cerenkov

radiation discharged whenever the shield repelled

another bolt of lightning from the Calamarain,

which was happening far too often for Riker's

peace of mind.

    With the captain absent, his present where-

abouts unknown, Riker was in command, and light-

ing a losing battle against alien entities determined

to destroy them. Not this time, he vowed silently,

determined not to lose another Enterprise while

Jean-Luc Picard was away. Once, in that cataclys-

mic crash into Veridian III, was enough for one

lifetime. Never again, he thought, remembering the

 sick sensation he had felt when that grand old ship

 had slammed into its final port. Not on my watch.

    Their present circumstances were precarious,

though. Warp engines down, shields fading, and no

sign yet that the Calamarain were willing to aban-

don their ferocious attack on the ship, despite his

sincere offer to abandon the experiment and retreat

from the galactic barrier--on impulse if necessary.

Diplomacy was proving as useless as their phasers,

even though Riker remained convinced that this

entire conflict was based solely on suspicion and

misunderstanding. Nothing’s more tragic than a

senseless battle, he thought.

    "Shields down to twenty percent," Lieutenant

Baeta Leyoro reported. The Angosian security

chief was getting a real baptism by fire on her first

mission aboard the Enterprise. So far she had

performed superlatively, even if Riker still occa-

sionally expected to see Worf at the tactical station.

"For a glorified blast of bad breath, they pack a hell

of a punch."

    Riker tapped his combadge to initiate a link to

Geordi in Engineering. "Mr. La Forge," he barked,

"we need to reinforce our shields, pronto."

    Geordi La Forge's voice responded immediately.

"We're doing what we can, Commander, but this

tachyon barrage just keeps increasing in intensity."

Riker could hear the frustration in the chief engi-

neer's voice; Geordi had been working nonstop for

hours. "It's eaten up most of our power to keep the

ship intact this long. I've still got a few more tricks

I can try, but we can't hold out indefinitely."

    "Understood," Riker acknowledged, scratching

his beard as he hastily considered the problem. The

thunder and lightning of the storm, as spectacular

as they looked and sounded, were only the most

visible manifestations of the Calamarain's untem-

pered wrath. The real danger was the tachyon

emissions that the cloud creatures were somehow

able to generate and direct against the Enterprise.

Ironically, it was precisely those faster-than-light

particles that prevented the ship from achieving

warp speed. "What about adjusting the field har-

monies?" he asked Geordi, searching for some way

to shore up their defenses. "That worked before."

    "Yeah," Geordi agreed, "but the Calamarain

seem to have learned how to compensate for that.

At best it can only buy us a little more time."

    "I'll take whatever I can get," Riker said grimly.

Every moment the deflectors remained in place

gave them one more chance to find a way out. "Go

to it, Mr. La Forge. Riker out."

    He sniffed the air, detecting the harsh odor of

burned circuitry and melted plastic. A few systems

had already been fried by the relentless force of the

aliens' assault, although nothing the auxiliary back-

ups hadn't been able to pick up. The Calamarain

had drawn first blood nonetheless, while the star-

ship crew's own phasers had done little more than

anger the enraged cloud of plasma even further,

 much to the annoyance of Baeta Leyoro, who took

 the failure of their weapons personally.

     This is all Q~ fault, Riker thought. Captain

 Picard had shielded Q from the Calamarain several

 years ago, and apparently they had neither forgot-

 ten nor forgiven that decision. It was the Enter-

 prise's past association with Q, he believed, that

 made the Calamarain so unwilling to trust Riker

 now when he promised to abort Professor Faal's

 wormhole experiment. Tarred by Q's bad reputa-

 tion... talk about adding insult to (possibly mor-

 tal) injury!

    For all we know, he mused, the Calamarain

might have sound reasons for objecting to the exper-

iment. If only they could be reasoned with somehow!

He glanced over at Counselor Deanna Troi, seated

to his left at her own command station. "What are

you picking up from our stormy friends out there?"

he asked her. The seriousness in his eyes belied the

flippancy of his words. "Any chance they might be

calming down?"

    Troi closed her eyes as she reached out with her

empathic senses to probe the emotions of the

seething vapors that had enveloped the ship. Her

slender hands gently massaged her temples as her

breathing slowed. No matter how many times

Riker had seen Deanna employ her special sensi-

tivity, it never failed to impress him. He prayed

that Deanna would sense some room for compro-

mise with the Calamarain. All he needed was to

carve one chink in the other species' paranoia and

he was sure he could find a peaceful solution to this

needless conflict.

    Blast you, Q, he thought bitterly. He had no idea

what Q had done God-knows-when to infuriate the

Calamarain so, but he was positive it was some-

thing stupid, infantile, and typically Q-like. Why

should he have treated them any differently than

he's ever treated us?

    Riker's gaze swung inexorably to the right, where

an imperious-looking auburn-haired woman rested

comfortably in his own accustomed seat, a wide-

eyed toddler bouncing on her knee while she ob-

served the ongoing battle against the Calamarain

with an air of refined boredom. Mother and child

wore matching, if entirely unearned, Starfleet uni-

forms, with the woman bearing enough pips upon

her collar to outrank Riker if they possessed any

legitimacy which they most definitely did not.

The first officer shook his head quietly; he still

found it hard to accept that this woman and her

infant were actually Q's wife and son. Frankly, he

had a rough time believing that any being, highly

evolved or otherwise, would willingly enter into

any sort of union with Q.

    Then again, the female Q, if that's what she truly

was, had enough regal attitude and ego to be one of

Q's relations. A match made in the Continuum, he

thought. She seemed content to treat the imminent

annihilation of the ship and everyone aboard as no

more important than a day at the zoo, which was

probably just how she regarded the Enterprise. At

 least the little boy, whom she called q, appeared to

 be enjoying the show. He gaped wide-eyed at the

 screen, clapping his pudgy little hands at each

 spectacular display of pyrotechnics.

     I'm glad somebody ~ having a good time, Riker

 thought ruefully. I suppose I should be thankful that

 I don't have to worry about the kid’s safety. The two

 Qs were probably the only people aboard the

 Enterprise who weren't facing mortal danger. Who

 knows? he wondered. They may even be at the heart

 of the problem. Could the Calamarain tell that Q's

 family were on the ship? That couldn't possibly

 reflect well on the Enterprise.

    "I'm sorry, Will," Troi said, reopening her eyes

and lowering her hands to her lap. "All I can sense

is anger and fear, just like before." She stared

quizzically at the iridescent plasma surging across

the viewer. "They're dreadfully afraid of us for

some reason, and determined to stop us from

interfering with the barrier."

    The barrier, Riker thought. It all came back to

the galactic barrier. He could no longer see the

shimmering radiance of the barrier on the forward

viewer, but he knew that the great, glowing curtain

was only a fraction of a light-year away. For genera-

tions, ever since James Kirk first braved the galac-

tic barrier in the original Enterprise, no vessel had

ventured into it without suffering massive casual-

ties and structural damage. Professor Faal had

insisted that his wormhole experiment would have

no harmful effect on the barrier as a whole, but the

Calamarain definitely seemed to feel otherwise.

They referred to the barrier as the "moat" and had

made it abundantly and forcefully clear that they

would obliterate the Enterprise before they would

permit the starship to tamper with it. I need to find

some way to convince them that we mean no harm.

    That might be easier accomplished without any

Qs around to cloud the issue, he decided. "Excuse

me," he said to the woman seated to his right

ignoring for the moment the sound of the Cala-

marain pounding against the shields. He was un-

sure how to address her; although she claimed her

name was Q as well, he still thought of her as a Q

rather than the Q. "I'm afraid that the presence of

you and your child upon the Enterprise may be

provoking the Calamarain, complicating an al

ready tense situation. As the acting commander of

this vessel, I have to ask you to leave this ship

immediately."

    She peered down her nose at him as she might at

a yapping dog whose pedigree left something to be

desired. One eyebrow arched skeptically. For a

second or two, Riker feared that she wasn't even

going to acknowledge his request at all, but eventu-

ally she heaved a weary sigh. "Nonsense," she said,

in a tone that reminded him rather too much of

Lwaxana Troi at her most overbearing. "The Ct, la-

marain wouldn't dare threaten a Q. This is entirely

between you and that noxious little species out

there."

  Riker rose from the captain's chair and looked

 down on the seated woman, utilizing every possible

 psychological advantage at his disposal. She didn't

 look too impressed, and Riker recalled that, stand-

 ing, the woman was nearly as tall as he was. "That

 may be so," he insisted, "but I can't afford to take

 that risk." He tried another tack. "Surely, in all the

 universe, there is someplace else you'd rather be."

     "Several trillion," she informed him haughtily,

 "but dear q is amused by your little skirmish." She

 patted the boy's tousled head indulgently.

    Don't think of her as godlike super-being, Riker

thought as a new approach occurred to him. Think

of her as a doting more. His own mother had

tragically died when he was very young, but Riker

thought he understood the type. "Are you certain

it's not too violent for him?" he asked, trying to

sound as concerned and sympathetic as possible.

"Things are likely to get messy soon, especially

once our shields break down. It's not going to be

pretty."

    The woman's brow furrowed at his words. It

appeared the potential grisliness of the crew's prob-

able demise had not crossed her mind before. She

glanced around her, checking out the various frag-

ile humanoids populating the bridge. Outside, the

tempest bellowed its intention to destroy the Enter-

prise and all aboard her. As if to make Riker's

point, the ship pitched forward, slamming Lieuten-

ant Leyoro into her tactical console. Her grunt of

pain, followed by a look of stoic endurance, did not

escape the female Q's notice.

    Riker felt encouraged by her hesitant silence.

This might actually work, he thought. "You know,"

he added, "I cried my eyes out the first time I read

Old Yeller."

    The woman gave him a blank look; apparently

her omniscience did not extend to classic chil-

dren's fiction of the human species. Still, the basic

idea seemed to get across. She cast a worried look

at her son. "Perhaps you have a point," she con-

ceded. Resignation settled onto her patrician fea-

tures. "Too much mindless entertainment cannot

be good for little q... even if his father can't get

enough of your primitive antics."

    With that, both mother and child vanished in a

flash of white light that left Riker blinking. He

breathed a sigh of relief, settling back into the

captain's chair, until q reappeared upon his own

knee. "Stay!" he yelped boisterously. For a superior

being from a higher plane of reality, q felt solid

enough and, if Riker could trust his own nostrils, in

need of a fresh diaper beneath his miniature Star-

fleet uniform.

    Riker groaned aloud. Good thing the captain's

still missing, he thought, for the first and only time

since Picard's abduction. The captain, it was well-

known, had even less patience with small children

than his first officer. Now what do I do with this kid?

he wondered, looking rather desperately at Deanna

for assistance. Despite their otherwise dire circum-

stances, the counselor could not resist a smile at

Riker's sudden predicament.

     Mercifully, the female Q materialized in front of

 Riker and lifted the toddler from his knee. "Come

 along, young q," she scolded gently. "I mean it."

 She tapped her foot impatiently upon the floor,

 giving Riker just enough warning to avert his eyes

 before the pair disappeared in another blinding

 flash of light.

    He waited apprehensively for several seconds

thereafter, holding his breath against the likelihood

of another surprise reappearance. Had Q and q

really left for the time being? He did not delude

himself that the Enterprise had seen the last of

either of them, let alone their mischievous relation,

but he'd gladly settle for a temporary respite if it

gave him enough time to settle matters with the

Calamarain. Just what we needed, he thought sar-

castically. Three Qs to worry about from now on

    Deanna broke the silence. "I think they're gone,

Will."

    "Thank heaven for small favors," he said. Now,

if only the Calamarain could be disposed of so

easily! "Mr. Data, activate your modified transla-

tion system. Now that our visitors have departed,

let's try talking to the Calamarain one more time."

    "Understood, Commander." The gold-skinned

android manipulated the controls at Ops. After

much effort, Data had devised a program by which

humanoid language could be translated into the

shortwave tachyon bursts the Calamarain used to

communicate, and vice versa. "The translator is

on-line. You may speak normally."

    Riker leaned against the back of the captain's

chair and took a deep breath. "This is Commander

Riker of the U.S.S. Enterprise, addressing the Cala-

marain." In truth, he wasn't exactly sure whom he

was speaking to. Give me a face I can talk to any

day, he thought. "I'm asking you to call off your

hostile actions toward our vessel. Speaking on

behalf of this ship, and the United Federation of

Planets, we are more than willing to discuss your

concerns regarding the... moat. Let us return to

our own space now, and perhaps our two peoples

can communicate further in the future."

    I can't get more direct than that, Riker thought.

He could only hope that the Calamarain would

realize how reasonable his offer was. If not, our only

remaining option may be to find a way to destroy

the Calamarain before they destroy us, he realized.

A grim outcome to this mission, even assuming

their foe could be extinguished somehow.

    "They've heard you," Troi reported, sensing the

Calamarain's reaction. "I think they're going to

respond."

    "Incoming transmission via tachyon emission,"

Data confirmed. He consulted his monitor and

made a few quick adjustments to the translation

program.

    An eerie voice, devoid of gender or human

inflections, echoed throughout the bridge. Riker

decided he preferred the computer's ordinary

tones, or even the harsh cadence of spoken

Klingon.

     "We/singular remain/endure the Calamarain," it

 intoned. "Moat is sacred/essential. No release/No

 escape. Chaos waits/threatens. Enterprise brings/

 succors chaos. Evaporation/sublimation is manda-

 tory/preferable."

    Riker scowled at the awkward and downright

cryptic phrasing of the Calamarain's message. Un-

fortunately, Data didn't have nearly enough time

to get all the bugs worked out of the new transla-

tion program. It will have to do, he resolved.

Throughout human history, explorers and peace-

makers had coped without any foolproof, high-tech

translating devices. Could the crew of the Enter-

prise do any less?

    When the Calamarain talked of "chaos," he

guessed, they referred to Q and his kind. Frankly,

he couldn't blame the Calamarain for mistrusting

anyone associated with Q; that devilish trouble-

maker wasn't exactly the most sterling character

witness. As for "evaporation/sublimation," he feared

that term was simply the cloud creatures' way of

describing the forthcoming destruction of the En-

terprise, sublimation being the chemical process by

which solid matter was reduced to a gaseous state.

Who knows? he thought. Maybe the Calamarain

think they're doing us a favor by liberating our

respective molecules From the constraints of solid

existence.

    He didn't exactly see things their way. "Listen to

me," he told the Calamarain, hoping that his own

words weren't getting as badly garbled as theirs. He

strove to keep his syntax as simple as possible.

"The beings known as the Q Continuum are not

our allies. We do not serve the Q."

    In fact, he recalled, Q had also warned Captain

Picard to stay away from the galactic barrier

    "Chaos within/without," the Calamarain stated

mysteriously. "Chaos then/now/to come. No/not

be/not again. Excess risk/dread. No Enterprise/no

be."

    That doesn't sound good, Riker thought, whatev-

er it means. He refused to give up, boiling his

intended message down to its basics. "Please be-

lieve me. We will not harm you. Let us go." Even

our shaky translator can't mangle that, he prayed.

    The Calamarain responded not with words but

with a roar of thunder that rocked the bridge. Riker

felt his breath knocked out of him as the floor

suddenly lurched to starboard, nearly toppling him

from the captain's chair. Troi gasped nearby and

fierce bolts of electrical fire arced across the view-

screen. At the corm, Ensign Clarze struggled to

stabilize their flight path; sweat beaded on his

smooth, hairless skull. Behind Riker, Lieutenant

Leyoro held on to the tactical podium for dear life

while the rest of the bridge staff fought to remain at

their stations. Only Data looked unfazed by the

abrupt jolt. "The Calamarain are not replying to

your last transmission, Commander," he reported.

The android inspected the raging tempest on the

screen. "At least not verbally."

 Troi released her grip on her chair's armrests as

the floor leveled. The din of the Calamarain's

attack persisted, though, like a ringing in Riker's

ears and a constant vibration through his bones. "I

sense great impatience," she informed him.

"They're through with talking, Will."

    "I got that impression," he said. He looked

around the bridge at the tense and wary faces of the

men and women depending on his leadership.

Wherever you are, Captain, he thought, I hope

you're faring better than us.

 

Chapter Two

 

"Now WHERE ARE WE?" he asked. "And when?"

    Captain Jean-Luc Picard, late of the Starship

Enterprise, looked around as he found himself

drifting in deep space. An astounding abundance

of stars surrounded him on all sides, more than he

had ever seen from a single location before. Just by

twisting his neck from side to side, he could spot an

astonishing variety of stellar phenomena: giant

pillars of dust and gas rising up into the starry

void, great globular clusters filled with millions of

shining blue suns, supernovas spewing light and

matter in their violent death throes, nebulas, qua-

sars, pulsars, and more. Craning his head back, he

saw above him what looked like the awesome

spectacle of two enormous clouds of stars colliding;

huge glowing spirals, streaked with shades of blue

and scarlet and bedecked with countless specks of

white-hot fire, merged into an amorphous mass

of luminescence large enough, Picard guessed, to

hold--or destroy--several million solar systems.

Were any of those worlds inhabited? he wondered,

hoping despite all appearances that some form of

sentient life could survive the tremendous cosmic

cataclysm transpiring overhead. Then Q drifted

between Picard and the fusing stellar clusters,

completely spoiling the view.

    "Quite a show, isn't it?" Q remarked, floating on

his back with his interlocked hands cradling the

back of his head, his elbows extended toward the

sky. Like Picard, he wore only a standard Starfleet

uniform, his omniscience protecting them both

from the vacuum. "You should have seen it the first

time."

    Impressive, yes, Picard agreed silently, but where

exactly, in space and time were they now? As he

floated in the void, he considered all that he saw

around him. Judging from the sheer density of stars

in sight, he theorized that he and Q were either

very close to the galactic core of the Milky Way or

else sometime very distant in the past, when the

expanding universe was much smaller, and the

interstellar distances much shorter, than they were

in his own time. Or both, he realized.

    "When is this?" he asked Q again. At the preced-

ing stop on Q's tour, Picard had found himself

millions of years in the past. He could only specu-

late what era Q had brought him to now, just as he

 could only ponder what devious reason Q had for

 abducting him in the first place. Besides Q's own

 perverse amusement, that is. "I demand an expla-

 nation."

     "One would think you would have learned by

 now, mon capitain," Q replied, "that your de-

 mands and desires are quite irrelevant where I am

 concerned." He assumed a standing posture a few

 meters away from Picard. "For what it's worth,

 though, we are presently a mere one million years

 before your home sweet home in the twenty-fourth

 century." A polished bronze pocketwatch materia-

 lized in Q's palm and he squinted at its face.

 "Hmmm. We seem to be a few minutes early."

    "Early for what?" Picard asked. At every previ-

ous stop, they had observed the activities of Q's

younger self. Yet they appeared to be very much

alone at the present, with only a surplus of stars to

keep them company. A million years ago, he

thought, both amazed and aghast. Even if I knew

where Earth was among those distant stars, the first

human beings will not stand erect for another five

hundred thousand years. Here and now, I am the

only living Homo sapiens in the entire universe. It

was a terrifying thought.

    "For them," Q answered as a sudden flash of

white light attracted Picard's eyes. The light flared

and died in an instant, leaving behind two human-

oid figures striding across the empty void as though

they were walking upon a level pathway. They

approached him and Q at a brisk pace, coming

 within ten or fifteen meters of where Picard floated

 beside Q. Paradoxically, he thought he heard foot-

 steps, despite the utter absurdity of any sound

 existing in the vacuum. Then again, he thought,

 with Q, nothing is impossible.

    He recognized both figures from earlier points in

Q's past. One of them was Q himself, albeit a

million years younger than the self-centered and

thoroughly irritating individual who had kid-

napped him only hours before. This was a more

youthful Q, he had learned, one at the very onset of

his mischievous career Would that the Continuum

had curbed him way back here, Picard thought,

knowing better than most just how insufferable Q

would become in the many millennia ahead. I don't

know what's scarier, he mused, a more juvenile Q or

a one closer to the Q I know.

    The other figure made Picard even more uneasy.

He called himself 0, as in nil, and he claimed to be

an explorer from a far-off dimension unknown

even to the Continuum. Picard, who considered

himself a quick judge of character, found 0 quite

a shady customer. Back on the Enterprise, he

thought, I wouldn't trust him within a light-year of

my starship. Picard was quick to remember that

everything he now saw had been "translated" by Q

into terms his human mind and senses could

comprehend. That being the case, Picard had

to wonder what more-than-human characteristics

were represented by O's weathered features and

stout frame, and how much the older Q's memories

may have colored his anthropomorphized portrait

of the roguish stranger. From what preternatural

first impression came the devilish gleam in the

man's azure eyes, the cocksure set of his toothy

grin, or the swagger in his stride? Picard could tell

0 was trouble at first glance; so why couldn't the Q

of this era? Just who or what was 07 Falstaff to the

young Q's Prince Hal, Picard speculated, falling

back as ever on his beloved Shakespeare, or some-

thing a good deal more sinister? If nothing else, I'm

accumulating valuable insights into the early days

of the Q Continuum. He just hoped that he would

someday be able to return to his own ship and era

so that he could report all he had learned back to

Starfleet, where the Q were justly regarded as one

of the universe's most intriguing mysteries--and

potential threats.

    As before, neither 0 nor the younger Q were

aware of Q and Picard's presence. Much like

Scrooge and his ghostly visitors, Picard thought,

when they spied on the likes of Bob Cratchit or

Fezziwig.

    0 sang boisterously as he trod with spaceways

with Q:

 

"There was a young lad whose bony virility,

brought him some pains in a court of civility."

 

    The attire of the new arrivals, Picard noted, had

changed significantly since O's first appearance in

this universe. This came as no surprise; throughout

Picard's trek through time, the clothing of those he

observed had evolved more or less along Earth's

historical lines. An artistic conceit, according to Q,

intended to convey a sense of antiquity, as well as

the gradual passage of time, to the likes of Picard,

who had to wonder whether the concept of clothing

even applied to the Q in their true form. How much

of this is real, he mused, and how much simply

stage dressing on the part of Q?

  He might never know.

 

"On posh settees with pinky out,

He found not much to chat about."

 

    At present, 0 and the young Q affected the

fashions of eighteenth century Europe, some one

hundred thousand millennia before the real thing.

Both figures wore stylish velvet suits, O's a rich

olive green, while Q preferred periwinkle blue.

Their long coats were open in front to expose rosy

damask vests from which ruffled shirt tops peeked.

Black silk cravats were tied around their necks and

each man wore a short brown wig, tied in the back,

atop his head. Polished black shoes with gleaming

metal buckles clicked impossibly against the emp-

tiness of space, beneath white wool stockings that

were held up by ribbons tied above the knee. They

might have been two fine gentlemen out for a night

on the town, Picard observed, except that, in this

instance, that town was the known universe of a

million years ago.

    O's singing voice was as gravelly as ever, and

more enthusiastic than melodious:

 

"But on darkened nights, 'hind tavern gates,

He discovered he had lots of mates/"

 

    Wrapping up his raucous ditty, he laughed and

slapped young Q on the back. "Boldness!" 0 de-

clared. "That's the ticket. Follow your instincts and

never mind what the fainthearted say." His raspy

voice held a trace of an accent that Picard couldn't

place; certainly it was nothing resembling the cap-

tain's native French. O's crippled left leg dragged

behind him as he hiked beside Q, expounding on a

topic he had mentioned before. "Take the fine art

of testing, say. Determining the ultimate limits and

potential of lesser species under controlled condi-

tions. That's a fine and fitting vocation for beings

like us. Who better than we to invent curious and

creative challenges for our brutish brethren?"

    "It sounds fascinating," young Q admitted. "I've

always been intrigued by primitive life-forms, espe-

cially those with a crude approximation of sen-

tience, but it never occurred to me to intervene in

their humble existence’s. I've simply observed them

in their natural environments."

    "That's fine for a start," 0 said, "but you can't

really understand a species unless you've seen how

they respond to completely unexpected circum-

stances-of the sort that only we can provide. It's

an engrossing pastime for us, entertaining as well

 as educational, while providing a valuable service

 to the multiverse. Only by testing baser breeds can

 they be forced to transcend their wretched routines

 and advance to the next level of existence." 0 lifted

 his gaze heavenward as he extolled this lofty agen-

 da. "Or not," he added with a shrug.

     "But doesn't meddling with their petty lives

 interfere with their natural evolution?" Q asked.

 Picard's jaw nearly dropped at the sight of Q

 making the case for the Prime Directive. Now I've

 seen everything, he thought.

    "Nature is overrated," 0 insisted. "We can do

better." A gold-framed mirror appeared out of

nowhere and 0 held it out in front of him so that it

captured the reflection of both him and Q. "Take

you and me, say. Do you think our far-seeing

forebears would have ever evolved to this exalted

state if they'd worried about what nature intended?

Of course not! We've overcome our base, bestial

origins, so it's only fitting that we help other breeds

do the same--if they're able."

  "And if they're not?" Q asked.

    0 dispatched the mirror to oblivion, then

shrugged. "Well, that's regrettable when it hap-

pens, but you can't groom a garden without doing a

little pruning now and then. Extinction's part of

the evolutionary agenda, natural or not. Some

portion of those beneath us are going to flunk

the survival test whether we help them along or

not. We're just applying a little creativity to the

process."

    Picard recalled the older Q's periodic attempts

to judge humanity and felt a chill run down his

spine. Was this where Q acquired his fondness for

draconian threats? If so, he thought, then 0 had a

lot to answer for.

    "That's true enough, ! suppose," the young Q

said, listening attentively and occasionally nodding

in agreement. To Picard's dismay, O's lessons ap-

peared to be sinking in. "I take it you've done this

before?"

    "Here and there," 0 admitted with what Picard

regarded as characteristic vagueness. "But you

don't need to take my word for it, not when you

can experience for yourself the rich and restorative

rewards of such pursuits. And there's no time like

this moment to begin," he enthused, giving Q a

hearty slap on the back while simultaneously,

Picard noted, changing the subject from his past to

the present. "Now, where are these peculiar people

you were telling me about?"

    Young Q pointed at the colliding star dusters

overhead. Lace cuffs protruded from the deep,

turned-back sleeves of his velvet coat. "Look!" he

urged 0, and Picard was surprised by the infectious

good humor in the youth's tone, so different from

the sour sarcasm of his older self. "Here they

come."

    Picard looked where indicated. At first he saw

nothing but the same breathtaking panorama he

had viewed before, the luminous swirls of stars and

radiant gas coming together into one resplendent

 pageant of light and color, but as he gazed further a

 portion of the colossal spectacle seemed to detach

 itself from the whole, growing ever larger in com-

 parison as it hurled across the void toward the

 assembled immortals, plus Picard. The strange

 phenomenon devoured the incalculable distance

 between them, coming closer and closer until he

 recognized the incandescent cloud of seething

 plasma.

     "The Calamarain," Picard breathed in astonish-

 ment, never mind the lack of any visible atmo-

 sphere. And one million years in the past, no less!

 He never would have imagined that the Calamar-

 ain were so old. Were these the very same entities

 who had been approaching the Enterprise before,

 at the very moment that Q had snatched him away,

 or were these merely their remote ancestors? Either

 way, who could have guessed that their kind dated

 back to so distant an era?

    Then again, he reflected, the late Professor Ga-

len's archaeological studies had revealed, with a

little help from the captain himself, that humanoid

life existed in the Milky Way galaxy as far back as

four billion years ago, and Picard had recently seen

with his own eyes humanoid beings on Tagus III

two billion years before his own time, so why

should he be surprised that gaseous life-forms were

at least one million years old? Picard shook his

head numbly; the tremendous spans of time en-

compassed by his journey were almost too huge to

conceive of, let alone keep track of. It's too much,

he thought, trying to roll with the conceptual

punches Q kept dishing out. How can one mortal

mind cope with time on this scale?

    The massive cloud that was the Calamarain,

larger and wider across than even a Sovereign-class

starship, passed within several kilometers of Pi-

card, 0, and the two Qs. Iridescent patterns dazzled

along the length and breadth of the cloud, produc-

ing a kaleidoscopic array of surging hues and

shades. "So these are them?" 0 said, the wrinkles

around his eyes deepening as he peered at the huge

accumulation of vapors. "Well, they're sparkly

enough, I'll give them that." His nostrils flared as

he sniffed the vacuum. "They smell like a swamp,

though." He limped nearer to the border of the

cloud. "What say we start the testing with them,

see how adaptable they are?"

    "Er, I'm not sure that's a good idea," young Q

answered, lagging behind. One of his high stock-

ings came loose and he tugged haplessly at its neck.

Next to Picard, his older self sighed and shook his

head sadly. "The Coulalakritous are fairly ad-

vanced in their own right, only a few levels below

the Continuum, and they aren't exactly the most

sociable of creatures."

    "Coulalakritous?" Picard whispered to his own

Q, lowering his voice out of habit even though

neither 0 nor the young Q could hear him.

 "The name changed later," he said, shrugging his

 shoulders. "Be reasonable, Jean-Luc. It's been

 umpteen thousand years, after all. How often do

 you think of your precious France as Gaul?"

     Picard decided not to argue the point, choosing

 instead to concentrate on the scenario unfolding

 before him. So this was indeed where Q first

 acquired his insidious inclination for "testing"

 humanity and other species. Many thanks, O, he

 thought bitterly; if the mysterious entity did noth-

 ing else, this alone was enough to condemn him in

 Picard's eyes.

     "Wait," young Q called out, hurrying to catch up

 with his companion as 0 continued to advance

 toward the sentient plasma cloud. "I told you, they

 don't approve of visitors."

    "And you're going to let that stop you?" 0

challenged. He chuckled and stirred the outside of

the cloud with a meaty finger. Thin blue tracings of

bioelectrical energy ran up his arm, but he only

cackled louder. "All the more reason to shake up

their insular existence and see how they react.

You'll never learn anything if you worry about

what the subject of your experiment wants. Let the

tested dictate the terms of the test and you defeat

the whole point of the exercise."

    "I don't know," young Q said, hesitating. Picard

thought he saw restraint and good sense warring

with temptation and unchecked curiosity on the

callow godling's face. I know which side I'm betting

on, he thought, calling upon over ten years of

personal experience with the older Q.

     "Come on, friend," 0 egged him on. "Surely we

 didn't come all this way just to gawk at these

 cumulus critters from out here. Where's your sense

 of adventure, not to mention scientific inquiry?"

    Restraint and good sense went down in flames as

the young Q's pride asserted itself. "Right here!"

he crowed, thumbing his chest. "Who are these

puffed-up piles of hot air to decide where a Q

should come and go? To blazes with their privacy!"

    "There's the Q I know!" 0 said proudly, and

Picard, looking on silently, had to agree. 0 jabbed

his prot6g6 in the ribs with his elbow. "For a

second there I thought you might be one of those

stuffed shirts from the Continuum." His face as-

sumed a mock-serious expression that endured for

only an instant before collapsing into a mischie-

vous grin. "Between you and me, friend, you're the

only one of your lot with any fire or fission at all,

not to mention a sense of humor."

    "Don't I know it!" young Q said indignantly. He

backed up to take a running leap into the glowing

cloudmass. "Last one into the Coulalakritous is

a--"

    0 grabbed Q's collar as he ran by, only moments

before the impetuous super-being dived headlong

into the sentient plasma. "Not so fast," he coun-

seled Q, confusing his duly appointed guardian.

"No reason to go barging in there, especially if this

phosphorescent fog is as inhospitable as you give

me to believe." A crafty smile creased his face. "I

say we infiltrate them first. The testing is always

 more accurate if the tester's hand remains con-

 cealed, especially at the beginning."

     Showing his true colors, Picard thought. Alas,

 the starstruck young Q failed to make the connec-

 tion between O's plan to deceive the Coulalakritous

 and the way 0 had already inveigled his way into

 Q's trust--and, through him, the Continuum.

    "Just follow my lead, young Q, and keep your

wits about you." Like a genie returning to his

bottle, 0 dissolved into a pocket of phosphorescent

mist indistinguishable from that which composed

the Coulalakritous. He/it hovered for a second

outside the immense cloud, then flowed tailfirst

into the billowing vapors as though sucked in by

some powerful pumping mechanism. The young Q

gulped nervously, looking back over his shoulder as

if contemplating a hasty retreat, but soon under-

went the same transformation and followed his

would-be mentor into the mass of plasma. Picard

made an attempt to keep track of the two new

streams of gas, but it was like trying to discern an

individual splash of liquid within a restless ocean.

From where Picard was floating, 0 and young Q

were completely lost within the Coulalalcritous.

Their metamorphosis surprised him at first, but the

logic behind it was readily apparent. lf Q assumes

human form when he tests humanity, I suppose it

only follows that he and 0 would disguise themselves

as gases before testing the Coulalakritous.

 "Hard to imagine I was ever so suggestible," the

 older Q commented, but Picard felt more appre-

 hensive than nostalgic. His heart sank as he

 guessed what was coming next.

    "We're going after them, aren't we?" he asked,

resigned to yet another bizarre and disorienting

experience. At least I might learn something that

couM help the Enterprise in my own time, he

consoled himself, assuming his ship had indeed

encountered the Calamarain in his absence. It

dawned on him that he had no idea how much time

might have passed upon the Enterprise while he

was away. Had the Calamarain threatened the ship

once more? What was happening to Riker and the

others?

    "You know me so well, Jean-Luc," Q said. He

snapped his fingers and a sudden hot flush rushed

over Picard as, before his eyes, the very atoms of

his body sped up and drifted farther apart, their

molecular bonds dissolving at Q's direction. He

held his hand up before his face just in time to see

the hand become insubstantial and semitranspar-

ent, like a ghost in some holodeck fantasy. His

fingers fluttered like smoke rising from a five-year-

old's birthday cake, merging and coalescing into a

single continuous stream of radiant mist. His arm

quickly went the way of his digits and, before he

knew it, Picard saw within his field of vision only

the outer limits of the man-sized accumulation of

gas he had become.

 How can I see without eyes? he marveled. How

can I think without a brain? But the Calamarain, or

the Coulalakritous, or whatever they were called at

this place and time, proved that consciousness

could exist in this form, so he could, too, it seemed.

The galaxy looked the same as it had before, the

overflowing cornucopia of stars around him shin-

ing just as brightly. He felt a strange energy suffus-

ing his being, though, like the tingle of static

electricity before it was discharged. Strange new

senses, feeling like a cross between hearing and

touch, detected waves of power radiating from the

Coulalakritous. The charge of the larger cloud

tugged on him like gravity, drawing him toward the

seething sea of vapor. Picard surrendered to the

pull, uncertain how he could have fled even if he

had wanted to. Despite his resignation, a sudden

sense of misgiving increased as the great cloud

filled the horizon. He felt a surge of panic welling

from somewhere deep inside him, and realized that

it stemmed from his memories of being immersed

in the group-mind of the Borg Collective. If he had

still possessed a physical body, he would have

trembled at the prospect of losing his individuality

once again.

    Another shimmering cloudlet drifted a few me-

ters away, on a parallel course toward the Coulalak-

ritous. Lacking a mouth or any other features, it

nonetheless addressed him in Q's voice. "Be of

stout heart, Picard. You're going where no va-

porized human has ever gone before."

    Then the stars were gone and all Picard could see

or hear or feel was the overwhelming presence of

the cosmic cloud all around him. It was a mael-

strom of surging currents and eddies, carrying him

along in their wake. A million voices hummed

around him, yet, to his vast relief, he discovered he

could still isolate his own thoughts from the din.

Snatches of conversation, too many to count, beat

upon his new inhuman senses, almost deafening

him:

    ... the Principal Intent of Gravitational Fixities

are to perpetuate Substance along Graduated Hier-

archies... until fuller Thou art, tarry and ask

Myself again . . . to the Inverse, the Singular Attri-

butes of Transuranic Essentials plainly denote...

Solitary Pygmy Suns forever desired before Paired

Twins... no, Thou mistakes My Supposition gross-

ly... ever should the Whole of Thoughtful Souls

arrive at Concord and Harmony... much does

Myself long to behold Such... never in Tenfold

Demi-Spans shall That come to pass... Should

Thou refuse to merge Thy Vitality with Thy Fellows,

Thou cannot rightly anticipate that They shall

merge Thine with Thou... Our Hours were Exem-

plary in the Time Before... was a Unique In-

stance, not a Tendency of Import or Duration... I

dreamed I was a Fluid... wherefore do We jour-

ney?... entreat Succor for Myself, My Ions lose

Their Galvanism... Thou ever avers Such!... the

Pursuit of Grace takes precedence over Mere

 Beauty... do Thou fancy that Quasars have

 Spirits?... I dispute That resolutely... no, pray

 regard the Evidence ....

    Mon Dieu, Picard thought, spellbound by the

unending torrent of communication, which struck

him as being somewhere halfway between a Vulcan

mind-meld and late-night debates at Starfleet

Academy. As far as he could tell, the Coulalak-

ritous did not possess a single unified conscious-

ness like the Borg, but rather were engaged in

incessant dialogue with each other. Could it be, he

speculated, that this sentient cloudmass repre-

sented some form of absolute democracy? Or per-

haps they had a more academic orientation, like an

incorporeal university or seminar. He wondered

how this incredible forum compared with the

Great Link of the Changelings, as described in

Odo's intelligence reports from Deep Space Nine.

The so-called Founders were liquid while the Coula-

lakritous were gaseous, but how different did that

make the two species? From the point of view of a

former solid, he mused, both seem equally amor-

phous... and astounding. He could only hope

that someday he would have the opportunity to

compare the experiences with Odo himself. No

doubt Worf or Miles O'Brien would be happy to

introduce them.

    "Annoying, aren't they?" Q's voice piped up

from somewhere nearby. "They never shut up and

they never tire of debating each other. Small won-

der they don't want to communicate with any other

intelligence’s; they're too busy arguing with them-

selves."

    Picard looked for Q, but all he saw was the

ceaseless motion of the Coulalakritous. It seemed a

minor miracle that he could hear Q at all over the

cacophonous buzz of the cloud creatures' conversa-

tion. These aren't really sound waves at all, he

considered, recalling a Starfleet theory that the

Calamarain communicated by means of tachyon

emissions. Am I actually "hearing" tachyons now?

    The ambient heat within the cloud was intense,

but his new form did not find it uncomfortable. Of

course, he realized. The Coulalakritous would have

to generate their own internal heat, and in massive

quantities, to avoid freezing solid in the cold of

space. Some sort of metabolic chemical reaction,

he wondered, or controlled nuclear fusion? Either

way, he suspected that his ordinary human body

would be incinerated instantly by the volcanic

temperature within the cloud. Instead, the ionized

gases merely felt like a sauna or hot spring. Re-

markable, Picard thought, savoring the experience

despite other, more pressing concerns. The more

he listened, the more he thought he could isolate

individual voices by their tone or timbre. There

were diverse personalities alive within the collec-

tive boundaries of the plasma cloud: long-winded

bores, excited explorers, passionate visionaries,

skeptics, cranks, poets, philosophers, fussbudgets,

free thinkers, reactionaries, radicals, and scientists.

He could hear them all, and the only thing they all

 seemed to have in common was that they savored

 debate and discussion. There's so much we could

 learn from these beings, Picard thought.

     Q sounded substantially less awestruck. "If I live

 to be another eternity, I'll never understand why I

 found this nattering miasma so interesting in the

 first place." Picard could hear the impatience in his

 tone. "If you're quite through with your adolescent

 sense of wonder, perhaps you'd care to pay atten-

 tion to the carefree antics of my younger self and

 his dubious acquaintance. That is why we're here,

 you know."

     "Where are they?" Picard asked, genuinely at a

 loss.

     "Can't you hear them?" Q responded. "Why,

 they're right over there."

    Not only could Picard not distinguish 0 and the

other Q from the rest of the maelstrom, he couldn't

even see Q. No doubt the Coulalakritous could tell

each other apart visually, he thought, but he could

barely make sense of what he was hearing, let alone

seeing. Even though he was beginning to distin-

guish one voice from another, he could hardly

pinpoint two specific individuals in this gaseous

Tower of Babel. The sights and sensations re-

mained far too alien. "Over there? Pay attention?"

he said, incredulous. "I don't even know what I am

anymore."

    "Complain, complain. Is that all you can do,

Jean-Luc?" Q said. "I knew I should have brought

along Data instead. At least he can listen to more

than one sound at once and still comprehend what

he's hearing." He sounded sorely ill-used. "Very

well, I suppose I have to do everything around

here."

    All at once, the overpowering rustle of impas-

sioned discussion surrounding him receded further

into the background, to the extent that he could

now isolate the distinctive voices of both 0 and the

younger Q. The two counterfeit Coulalakritous

became visible as well, acquiring a silvery metallic

glow that set them apart from the other sentient

gases swirling through the vast gaseous communi-

ty. Shapeless and inhuman, they reminded Picard

of globules of liquid mercury. He assumed that the

silver tinting was for his benefit alone; presumably

both the Coulalakritous and the trespassing im-

mortals were unaware of the change. The argent

glow had to be out of phase, too, lest he and the

older Q's presence be exposed. To Picard's slight

annoyance, he observed that his obnoxious travel-

ing companion had not bothered to make himself

visible as well. It's just like Q, he fumed, to put

others at a disadvantage, especially me.

    "Happy now?" the indistinguishable Q asked.

He might have been anywhere around Picard. "Do

try to concentrate, Jean-Luc. I don't want to have

to relive this a third time just for your sake."

    Conveniently, the silver puffs of vapor were not

far away, although Picard found it hard to estimate

precise distances within such an atypical environ-

ment. They were certainly within listening range.

 He felt slightly uncomfortable eavesdropping this

 way, even on a Q, but he had to concede that it was

 preferable to having to deal with 0 and the other Q

 directly. Every Starfleet captain knew a little espio-

 nage was necessary now and then.

     "Is this all they do?" 0 inquired out loud. His

 cloud, Picard noted, was larger than the younger

 Q's, and streaked with dark metallic shadings that

 were almost black in places. "Why, they're nothing

 but talk! Rancid and rubbish, all of them." He

 clearly did not approve.

     "Well, they're said to have traveled extensively

 throughout the galaxy," his companion offered. At

 the moment, the youthful Q resembled a glistening

 dust devil, whirling madly with speed and energy

 to burn. "And they never forget anything, or so I'm

 told."

    "Tell me about it," the older Q said dryly,

possibly recalling the Calamarain's undying ven-

detta against him.

    "Can they travel faster than a ray of sunlight?" 0

asked, and Picard could readily imagine the calcu-

lating expression on the old rogue's face. If 0 still

had a humanoid face, that is.

    "Why, sure! How else would they get around?" Q

said cheerily, then remembered O's inability to

travel at warp speed except through the Continu-

um. "Er, nothing personal, I mean. I forgot about

your... well, there's more to godhood than zip-

ping from here to there in a hurry." The spinning

cloud turned pink with embarrassment at his faux

pas. "Why rush when you have all of eternity,

right?"

    This really was a long time ago, Picard realized.

It was hard to imagine the Q of the twenty-fourth

century being embarrassed by anything, let alone a

tactless remark. More’s the pity, he thought.

    "Calm down, friend. No offense taken," 0 in-

sisted. "This old wanderer's well aware of his

present limitations. It's hardly your fault, Q." An

edge of bitterness colored his words and Picard

recalled the crippled leg 0 possessed in his human

guise. "Blame instead those meddling miscreants

who banished me here in the first place. Contempt-

ible curs?'

    "But I thought you came here of your own

choosing," the Q-cloud said, taken aback by the

sudden malevolence in O's tone, the spin of its

miniature eddies slowing anxiously.

    "So I did?' 0 asserted, regaining his usual robust

air. "Who says otherwise?"

    "But, I mean, you..." Q stammered. Picard

had to admit to himself that he found this Q's

discomfort rather satisfying; it was good to see Q

off balance for once, even if Picard had been forced

to travel countless centuries in the past to witness

the occasion.

    "Yesterday's news," 0 insisted. "Moldy memo-

ries better off forgotten." The silver mist that was 0

cruised along the perimeter of the plasma cloud.

Picard found he could follow him by focusing his

attention in that direction. "Let's get on with the

 business of testing this talkative tempest. Here's an

 idea: Suppose we try to herd this cloud in one

 direction or another. Put some wind in our sails, so

 to speak."

 "Er, what exactly would that prove?" Q asked.

 "Why, nothing less than whether the Coulalak-

 ritous are capable--and worthy--of controlling

 their own destiny. If the likes of you and I have the

 power to change their course at will, then plainly

 they're not as highly evolved as they should be."

 He emitted the tachyon equivalent of a low chuck-

 le. "And, as an added bonus, I acquire my own

 personal porters. What do you say, Q? Do you

 think we can do it?"

    Mon Dieu, Picard thought, shocked by the cold-

blooded ruthlessness of O's suggestion. He~ think-

ing of enslaving the Coulalakritous, to harness them

as means offaster-than-light transportation for him-

selfi It was a blatant violation of the Prime Direc-

tive, not to mention basic morality. The voices

around him belonged to a sentient people, not

beasts of burden. Did the young Q comprehend the

full horror of what his companion was advocating?

Picard wondered. Was this the telltale moment that

would lift the scales from his (metaphorical) eyes?

    Apparently not. "I don't know," young Q said.

"I've never really considered the matter before."

    "Of course not," 0 said readily. "Why should

you, a healthy young Q like yourself?." The silver

mist, with its darker undertones, oozed sinuously

around the glowing pocket of gas that now embod-

ied the young Q. "For us that have a wee bit of

trouble getting around, though, this notion merits a

closer look. After all, much as I enjoy your compa-

ny, you don't want to have to chauffeur me around

the cosmos indefinitely, do you?"

    "That's what I promised the Continuum," Q

said, sounding as if the full implications of that

commitment were just now sinking in.

    "So you did," 0 assented, "and for sure you

meant it at the time." The volume of the dark

silver gas began to increase dramatically, spreading

out in all directions around the outer surface of the

entire cloud. "Still, it can't hurt to explore other

options now. You wanted to test another species,

right? Trust me, this is as good a way as any."

    "Wait. What are you doing?" The Q-mist started

to churn anxiously within the confines of the elder

entity's substance but found itself hemmed in,

unable to move. "Stop it!"

    "Just blasting two planets with one asteroid,

that's all," 0 stated as his dark silver stain perme-

ated the nebulous borders of the Coulalakritous,

enclosing the cloud within his own gaseous grip.

"Nothing to be alarmed about, at least not for you

and me. The cloud, on the other hand... well,

they might have cause for concern."

    This is monstrous, Picard thought, sickened by

O's shameless attempt to place an entire communi-

ty of intelligent beings under his control. If he

understood the situation correctly, 0 meant to turn

the Coulalakritous into the interstellar equivalent

 of galley slaves, yoked into transporting 0 through-

 out the galaxy at warp speed. He had to remind

 himself that, whatever happened next, everything

 he was witnessing now had already taken place

 from the perspective of his own era, was incredibly

 ancient history in fact, predating the very birth of

 humanity, none of which made it any easier to

 watch. "Why didn't you do something?" he chal-

 lenged the older Q, wherever he was.

    "It was too new," Q apologized from somewhere

behind Picard. '7 was too new. 0 sounded like he

knew what he was doing. How was I supposed to

know whether it was a reasonable experiment or

not?"

    "How could you not have?" Picard answered

angrily. Humanity had already learned that such

exploitation of another intelligent species was un-

conscionable, and human history was only a nano-

second in the lifetime of Q if his most grandiose

claims were to believed. "What's so hard to under-

stand about slavery?"

    "Ever ridden a horse, Picard?" Q retorted. "Ever

bred bees for honey? Believe me, you're a lot closer

to a horse or a bug than I was to the Coulalakritous,

even back then. Don't be so quick to judge me."

    "These are not horses!" the captain said. Indig-

nation deepened his voice. "And they are most

certainly not insects. I've heard them, felt them,

experienced at least a fragment of their existence--

and so have you."

 "I've listened to you, too, Picard," Q said, ma-

terializing before Picard in his usual guise. He

pinched the fabric of his uniform. "Contrary to my

appearance, that doesn't make me human, or even

a humanitarian."

    Picard would have shaken his head in disgust

had he still possessed humanoid form. I don't know

why I shouM be so surprised, he thought. Q has

never shown any consideration for "lesser" species

before, and it seems he was always that way.

    By now the taint of 0 had spread all over the

exterior of the cloud community. It thickened and

solidified, enclosing the Coulalakritous within a

thin, silvery membrane that began to squeeze in-

ward, forcing the assembled gases (including Pi-

card) to flow only in the direction 0 had chosen.

But his efforts to take the reins of the cloud did not

go unnoticed.

    The perpetual buzz of a million voices fell silent

for an instant, thousands upon thousands of dis-

cussions interrupted simultaneously, before the

dialogue started up again with a new and more

urgent tone:

    what is This?... What Now transpires?...

Make It cease!... Fearful am I... I cannot touch

the Outside.t. .. Nor I... Nor I... hurts My-

self... crushing... so CoM. . . losing Vital-

ity... cannot move... cease... cease NOW. t. . .

    It was hideous. Within seconds, 0 had reduced

an ageless, living symposium to panic. Picard

heard the shock and dismay in the cries of the

entire assemblage. He longed for the Enterprise,

 whose powerful phasers might be able to surgically

 peel 0 away from the Coulalakritous, but his ship

 was many millennia away. If only I could do some-

 thing to help these people!

     0 laughed boisterously, drowning out Picard's

 frustrated craving to stop him. The membrane

 squeezed harder and Picard felt the compressed

 gases press in on him from all sides but one,

 propelling him forward against his will. "Wait," he

 protested, not understanding why he should be

 feeling any pressure at all. "I thought we were out

 of phase with this moment in time."

     "Poetic license," Q explained, his humanoid

 shape unaffected by the pressure. "I want you to get

 the full experience."

     In other words, Picard realized, Q was generat-

 ing the sensation himself, to simulate conditions

 within the besieged cloud of plasma. Picard was

 less than grateful. I could have easily done without

 this much verisimilitude.

     The Coulalakritous fought back. Overcoming

 their initial consternation, the voices began to

 come together with a single purpose:

    ... cease... halt the Adversary . . . Our Volition

is Our Own... Our Will is United... cease crush-

ing Us... hurts... disregard the Torment...

shall not yield... persevere, do not cease stirring,

All of We... Halt the CoM... do not be Fear-

ful... Ours is the Heat of Many is... must be

Free... persevere... Together We can break

free... Together We... togethe?. . . Flashes of

lightning sparked along the inner skin of the mem-

brane 0 had become ....Togetherú.. Together...

Together...

    "Are you maeeo. 0 mocked them, his voice

emerging from the membrane so that he seemed to

be speaking from all directions at once. "All una-

nimity aside, I believe I have the upper hand at the

moment," he said, demonstrating his point by

constricting the enclosed gases further. Picard lost

sight of the Q-mist as, poetic license or not, he felt

his substance stretched and prodded by the pres-

sure being exerted on the cloud community. Be-

cause his senses were distorted by his unlikely new

form, it felt like a scream and sounded like heavy

gravity. Claustrophobia gripped him now that he

could no longer flow freely through the great cloud,

and he marveled at how quickly he had grown

accustomed to his gaseous state. At least he was

used to being contained within a skin of flesh; he

could only imagine how unbearable this captivity

must be to the Coulalakritous. If only I could do

something, he thought, but I'm not even really

here... I think.

    The cloud-beings did not submit readily to O's

will. The atmosphere surrounding Picard warmed

dramatically, transforming into a cauldron of su-

perheated gases, as they expanded outward against

the pressure of the membrane. The swirling mael-

strom of sentient vapors increased in fury, gaining

strength and intensity by the moment. Picard had a

sudden mental image of being in the middle of---

 no, being part of--an old-fashioned steam engine

 of colossal proportions. Perhaps, he thought hope-

 fully, 0 has underestimated the Coulalakritous.

 After all, they surely hadn't endured into the

 twenty-fourth century, eventually evolving into the

 Calamarain, by being defenseless. He cheered on

 their efforts, wishing he could add his own determi-

 nation, out of phase as he was, to the struggle.

     ... Together... break    free... Together...

 break free... Together... break free... To-

 gether... break free... Together...

    Slowly, the tide appeared to turn. The cloud

swelled against the membrane, spreading it ever

thinner around an expanding volume of ionized

and agitated gas. "Beasts! Brutes! Upstarts!" 0

cursed them, but his voice faded in volume as his

width approached infinitesimal. Within the cloud,

fierce currents tossed Picard around like a cork

upon the waves. "Blast you," 0 raged, barely audi-

ble now. "Give up, why don't you? Surrender!"

    Then, like an overinflated balloon, the mem-

brane that was 0 came apart and the victorious

Coulalakritous rushed through the gap to freedom.

"Time to switch seats for a better view," the older

Q commented, and Picard abruptly found himself

outside the cloud, looking on from a distance. The

gigantic fog, even larger and more diffuse than

before, loomed ahead of him, so attenuated that

Picard could glimpse stars and nebulae through it.

The Coulalakritous wasted no time contracting

back to their original proportions, growing opaque

once more. A second later, a stream of silver mist

was forcibly ejected from the vaporous communi-

ty. "Not my most dignified exit," Q commented,

watching his younger self spew forth from the

interior of the Coulalakritous, "but I like to think

I've improved since. You must concede that I've

always managed to depart the Enterprise with more

than a modicum of style."

    "I have always savored your exits," Picard

couldn't resist replying, "more than any other

aspect of your visits." Now that they had left the

plasma cloud behind, they had both resumed hu-

man form. Picard was relieved to look down and

see his body once more. Given a choice, he discov-

ered he preferred floating adrift in space to squeez-

ing in among the Coulalakritous.

    "Ho, ho, Jean-Luc," Q said darkly, hanging

upside down in relation to Picard. "Very droll. It

would be too much to expect, I suppose, any sign of

gratitude for showing you glimpses of a higher

reality."

    "Not when your motive has always seemed to be

more about your own self-aggrandizement than my

enlightenment," Picard answered.

    "My self can't possibly be more aggrandized," Q

stated, "as I thought you would have understood by

now." He looked away from Picard at what re-

mained of 0, hovering about a dozen meters away.

"Watch closely, rnon capitaine. Here's where things

get really interesting."

 Reduced to a severed string of silver-black film, 0

 rapidly reconstituted himself, assuming the same

 human form he had affected before. His craggy face

 was flushed with anger and his once-fine clothes

 were charred and seared around their edges. Smoke

 rose symbolically from the anomalous male figure

 suspended in the vacuum of space; Picard could

 not tell whether the fumes emanated from O's

 garments or his person. Beyond a doubt, 0 looked

 irritated enough to spontaneously combust at any

 moment.

    His companion and guardian, the young Q,

metamorphosized from mist to humanoid appear-

ance, then strolled across the void toward 0. His

attire was less battle-scarred than the other's, Pi-

card noted, perhaps because Q had not attempted

to subdue the Coulalakritous. Nervously eyeing his

cohort's affronted demeanor, he seemed inclined

to laugh the whole business off as an inconsequen-

tial lark. "Well, it appears we've worn out our

welcome, and then some," he remarked flippantly.

"Their loss, then. It's hardly the first time a lesser

species has failed to appreciate a superior life

form."

    "Nor would it be the last," his older self added,

with a pointed look at Picard.

    "On that you and I can agree," Picard shot back,

feeling singularly unappreciative at the moment.

    The young Q's attempt at levity failed to assuage

O's ire. "They can't do this!" he snarled, his previ-

ously jovial mask slipping away to expose a visage

of unmistakable indignation. "I won't be banished

again, not by their sort." His pale blue eyes glit-

tered like icy gems, reflecting the luminous shim-

mer of the Coulalakritous. "Never again," he

swore. "Never, I say!"

    Taken aback by 0's pique, young Q squirmed

uncomfortably, uncertain how to deal with his

friend's temper. "But didn't they pass your test?"

he asked. "You tried to harness them. They

wouldn't let you. I thought that was the whole

point of the endeavor."

    "They cheated!" 0 barked. "Just like the others.

And if there's one thing that I never abide, it's a

cheater. Remember that, Q, if you remember noth-

ing else. Never allow cheaters to make a travesty of

your tests."

    "Cheated how?" Q asked, looking genuinely

puzzled. "Did I miss something? As I much as I

loathe admitting my ignorance, I am rather new at

this, so I suppose it's possible I missed a subtlety or

two. Perhaps you can explain what precisely they

did wrong?"

    If 0 was listening at all to Q's prattle, he gave no

sign of it. He glared at the incandescent majesty of

the Coulalakritous with undisguised hostility. He

took a deep breath, inhaling some manner of

sustenance from the ether, and appeared to be

drawing on a hidden reserve of strength. The

smoky gray fumes rising from his scorched gar-

ments entwined about each other and, from Pi-

card's vantage point nearby, O's human facade

appeared to flicker slightly, giving Picard brief,

almost subliminal glimpses of another, more inhu-

man form. He received an impression of something

dark and coiled, surrounded by a blurry aura of

excess limbs or tendrils. Or was that only an

illusion created by the twisting spirals of smoke?

The more he watched, the more Picard became

convinced that what he saw was no mere trick of

smoke and starlight, but a genuine glimpse of

another aspect of the enigmatic stranger. Picard's

Starfleet training, along with years of experience in

dealing with diverse life-forms, had taught him not

to judge other beings by their appearance; nonethe-

less, he could not repress a shudder at this transito-

ry look behind O's customary persona. Indeed, he

reflected, it was the very indistinctness of the

images he perceived that made them far more eerie

and unsettling than a clear and distinct depiction

of the alien would have been. Picard found his

imagination all too eager to fill in the blanks in this

fractional, impressionistic portrait of O's true na-

ture. I knew there was more to him than met the

eye, he thought. Why couldn't Q see that?

    Power radiated from 0 like a gust of chilling

wind. Picard felt the passage of the energy upon his

face, stinging his cheeks, yet the power was not

directed at him but at the imposing presence of the

Coulalakritous. What could 0 do to such magnifi-

cent entities? Picard wondered. Had not the Coula-

lakritous already demonstrated their ability to

defend themselves?

 Yet, to his horror, he beheld the huge plasma

cloud begin to shrink beneath O's assault, its expan-

sive volume diminishing by the second. The bil-

lowing gases slowed and thickened, the swirling

eddies coming to a halt. Picard was only mildly

surprised to discover that he could still hear the

varied voices of the Coulalakritous crying out in

distress, their words slurred and winding down like

a malfunctioning recording:

    no... nooo. . . noooo . . . not... anewwww. . .

ceasssse. . . sooooo. . . cooooold. . . stopppppp.. .

traaaaaap... noooooo... essssscaaaaaape...

ceasssssse... at... onccccccce... ceasssssse...

freeeeeezzzing. . . helpœppppp. . .

    "Yes, stop?' young Q seconded anxiously. "You

don't need to do this, 0. Whatever they did, they're

not worth our attention, let alone your peace of

mind." His gaze darted back and forth between 0

and his imploding target. "Er, you can stop any-

time now, anytime at all .... "

    The enraged immortal paid no heed to either Q

or the Coulalakritous. His hate-filled eyes pro-

truded from their sockets while phantom tentacles

wavered in and out of reality around him. A trickle

of saliva dripped from the comer of his mouth as

he ground his broad white teeth together. All his

effort and concentration were aimed without ex-

ception at the intangible community that had pos-

sessed the audacity to elude his control. 0 raised his

arms, an action echoed by a blur of black exten-

sions, and coruseating scarlet energy flashed about

his extended fingertips.

     The cloud of plasma had already contracted to at

 least one-third its original size. It no longer looked

 truly gaseous in nature, but more like a mass of

 steaming, semiliquid slushú Then the slush con-

 gealed further, sucking in the last retreating wisps

 of vapor and turning a dull, ugly brown in hue.

 Picard had a horrifying mental image of an op-

 pressed prisoner being crammed into a box far too

 small for him, as he watched, helpless to intervene,

 while 0 forced the entire awesome accumulation of

 gas-beings ever closer to a solid state.

    ú.. Weeeeeee willllllll notttttttt forrrrrgetttttttt. . .

the Coulalakritous vowed, their separate voices

finally merging into one before falling silent en-

tirely. Where only moments before had existed an

incandescent cloud of blazing plasma, there now

remained only a dense, frozen snowball, indistin-

guishable from any of a billion comets traversing

the dark between the stars. If they registered on the

Enterprise ~ sensors in this state, Picard guessed, we

wouldn't give them a moment~ thoughtú Were the

Coulalakritous still conscious and aware of their

utter paralysis? Part of Picard prayed that they

were not.

    Yet 0 was not satisfiedú His beefy hands curled

into grasping claws, he brought them closer togeth-

er above his head, as if literally squeezing the

onetime cloud between his palms instead of merely

empty space. His phantasmal other self, superim-

posed upon his humanoid shell, shadowed his

every move. Less than a kilometer away from O, the

inert chunk of ice that was the Coulalakritous kept

on being compressed by invisible forces, its crystal-

line surface cracking and collapsing inward be-

neath the crushing power exerted by the vengeful

immortal. How far did 0 intend to take this? Picard

wondered, aghast. Until the very atoms that com-

posed the Coulalakritous fused together, igniting a

miniature supernova? Or was 0 able and willing to

compress his victims' mass to so great a density

that the Coulalakritous would be reduced to a

microscopic black hole, a pinprick in reality from

which they could never escape? Was such a horren-

dous feat even possible?

    Young Q appeared to fear something along those

lines. "I think that's enough, 0," he announced

with unexpected firmness. With a burst of pure

energy, he placed himself between 0 and his prey,

grunting involuntarily as he felt the force of 0's

unchecked ire. The flesh upon his face rippled and

grew distorted, like that of an old-time astronaut

enduring tremendous G-forces, and his bones

crunched together noisily as he shrunk into a

slightly squatter, more compact Q, losing at least a

centimeter of heightú He held his ground, though,

and O's attack rebounded upon its source, stagger-

ing the older entity and sending him stumbling

backward through empty space. Q to the rescue?

Picard marveled, more than a little startled by this

atypical display of altruism. I mean, of all peo-

ple... Q?

  "What?" 0 was as taken aback by Q's actions as

 Picard. "Are you out of your all-knowing mind?"

 he bellowed, visibly dismayed by the young Q's

 defiance. His ruddy face grew even more crimson.

 A vein along his left temple throbbed rhythmically

 like a pulsar. "Get out of my way, or I swear I'll...

 I'll..."

    Q flinched in anticipation of the other's wrath,

but no explosion, verbal or literal, followed. Per-

haps caught off guard by his own angry words, 0

faltered, falling mute even as the flailing, insub-

stantial tendrils that enshrouded him withdrew

into some private hiding place deep within his

person. He turned his back on Q and the two

invisible onlookers while he struggled to regain his

composure. "07" the young Q inquired anxiously.

    When the stranger, his clothes still smoldering

from his first battle with the Coulalakritous, faced

them again, no trace of animosity could be found

in his expression. He looked contrite and abashed,

not to mention exhausted by his exertions. Perspi-

ration plastered his damp curls to his skull. "For-

give me, friend, for losing my temper that way. I

shouldn't have raised my voice to you, no matter

how vexed that malodorous miasma made me."

    "Never mind me," Q responded, stretching his

body until he regained his usual dimensions. He

looked back over his shoulder at the solidified

chunk of Coulalakritous tumbling through the

void, its momentum carrying the frigid comet

slowly toward them. "What in the name of the

Continuum have you done to them?"

    0 paused to catch his breath before replying.

Freezing the gas-beings had obvious taken a lot out

of him. All the blood had drained from his face,

leaving him drawn and pale. Lungs heaving, he

bent forward, hands on his knees, and stared at his

shoes until his color returned. "That?" he inquired,

short of breath. "A mere bit of thermodynamic

sleight-of-hand, and nothing those cantankerous

clouds didn't have coming to them." He limped

across the vacuum until he hovered only a few

meters away from his fretful prot6g~. "You have to

understand, Q, that in any tests there must be

penalties for failure, and for deliberate cheating, or

else there's no inducement to excel. It looks harsh,

I know, but it's the only way. Lesser lights are not

going to submit to our tests out of the goodness of

their hearts. They seldom comprehend, you see,

the honor and the opportunity being bestowed

upon them. You need to motivate them, and some-

times that means having the gumption to apply a

sharp poke when necessary."

    "But the Coulalakritous?" Q asked, sounding

baffled. "What exactly did they--"

    "Things didn't go off quite as I planned there," 0

interrupted, striking a conciliatory tone. "To be

honest, I underestimated how out of practice I am,

and how inexperienced you are." He saw Q bristle

at the remark and held up his hand to fend off

the younger being's objections. "No criticism in-

tended, friend, merely a statement of fact. I'm the

one at fault for dropping us both into the deep end

 before we were ready. Perhaps we should round up

 some able assistance before trying again." He

 scratched his chin thoughtfully as the approaching

 ball of ice, roughly the size of a Starfleet shuttle-

 craft, barreled helplessly toward the location where

 he and Q just happened to be standing. "Yes, extra

 hands, that's the ticket. And I know just the right

 reinforcements to enlist in our cause .... "

     "Reinforcements?" Q asked, seconds before the

 frozen Coulalakritous would have collided with the

 two humanoid figures. Neither seemed particularly

 concerned about the oncoming comet. "Who do

 you mean?"

    "Wait and see," 0 promised. With a casual wave

of his hand, he deflected the course of the tumbling

mass of petrified plasma and sent it hurling off at a

forty-five-degree angle from him and his compan-

ion. "Follow me, Q. You won't be disappointed."

He vacated the scene in a flash, taking the young Q

with him. Left behind, Picard watched as the

victimized Coulalakritous receded into the dis-

tance. The closest star, the nearest possible source

of warmth, was countless light-years away.

    "It took them a couple millennia to thaw out

again," Q whispered in his ear. He glanced down at

the bronze pocketwatch in his hand. "Not that they

learned anything from the experience. They're still

just as ill-mannered as before."

    Picard was appalled. Small wonder the Cala-

marain had been eager to exact their revenge on Q

back in the twenty-fourth century. "That's all you

have to say about it?" Picard demanded, offended

by Q's cavalier tone. "An entire species frozen into

suspended animation for heaven knows how long,

and you have the audacity to complain about their

manners? Didn't this atrocity teach you anything?

How could you not have realized how dangerous

this 0 creature was?"

    "Oh, don't overdramatize, Jean-Luc," Q replied,

a tad more defensively than usual. "Perhaps I was a

trifle blind, in an omniscient sort of way, but

ultimately it was a mere prank, nothing more. A

trifle mean-spirited, I concede, but there was no

real harm done, not permanently. In the grand

cosmic scheme of things, our ionized friends were

merely inconvenienced, not actually injured in any

way that need concern us here." He shrugged his

shoulders. "Can I help it if the Calamarain didn't

see the funny side of it?"

    "If what I witnessed just now was nothing more

than a prank," Picard declared indignantly, "then I

shudder to think what you would consider genuine

maliciousness."

    Q gave Picard a smile that chilled the captain's

blood. "You should," he said.

 

Chapter Three

 

"REG?" DEANNA ASKED BETWEEN tWO claps of thun-

der. "Are you feeling all right?"

    Riker glanced over his shoulder at Barclay, who

was manning the primary aft science station. The

nervous lieutenant was looking a bit green, possi-

bly from the constant shaking caused by the assault

of the Calamarain. Despite the best efforts of the

Enterprise's inertial dampers, the bridge continued

to lurch from side to side, a far cry from the usual

smooth ride. The rocking sensation reminded

Riker of an Alaskan fishing vessel he'd served on as

a teen, but surely it wasn't bad enough to make

anyone nauseous, was it?

    Barclay started to reply, then clapped both hands

over his mouth. Riker rolled his eyes and hoped the

queasy crewman would not have to bolt for the

crew head. Barclay was a good man, but sometimes

Riker wondered how he ever got through the Star-

fleet screening process. Behind the command area,

Baeta Leyoro snorted disdainfully.

    "That will be enough, Lieutenant," Riker in-

structed her. Maintaining morale under such ardu-

ous conditions was hard enough without the crew

sniping at each other, even if he half sympathized

with the security chief's response. "How are our

shields holding up?"

    "Sixteen percent and sinking," Leyoro re-

sponded. She glared at the tempest upon the view-

screen.

    Riker nodded grimly. They needed to find some

way to retaliate. He would have preferred a more

peaceful resolution to this conflict, but they were

rapidly running out of options. Unfortunately,

conventional weapons had thus far proven ineffec-

tive against their attacker; phasers had not discour-

aged the Calamarain, whose close quarters to the

Enterprise precluded the use of quantum torpe-

does. Maybe, he mused, the Calamarain required a

more specialized deterrent.

    Lightning flashed across the viewscreen, and an

unusually violent shock wave rocked the bridge,

interrupting Riker's thoughts and slamming him

into the back of the captain's chair. His jaw snapped

shut so suddenly he narrowly avoided biting off the

tip of his tongue. To his left, he heard Deanna gasp

in alarm, but whether she was reacting to the

sudden impact or the Calamarain's inflamed emo-

 tions he couldn't begin to guess. At the conn,

 Ensign Clarze stabbed at his controls in a desperate

 effort to stabilize their flight but met with only

 mixed results. The floor beneath Riker's feet

 pitched and yawed like a shuttle going through an

 unstable wormhole. Even Data had to strain to

 keep his balance, digging his fingertips into the

 armrests of his chair. We can't take much more of

 this, he thought.

    As if to prove the point, Riker felt his stomach

turn over abruptly. Oh, no, he thought. He identi-

fied the sensation at once, even before he spotted a

puddle of spilled coolant, released during an earlier

impact, lifting off from the floor and floating

through the air, forming an oily globule only a few

meters away. "We have lost gravity generation

throughout decks one through fourteen of the

saucer section," Data confirmed.

    At least we didn't lose the entire network, Riker

thought. The ship's internal gravitation system was

divided into five overlapping regions; from the

sound of it, they had lost gravity in about half of

the saucer. In theory, the entire battle section of the

ship, including engineering, still had gravity, but

for how much longer? This latest technical mishap

provided an eloquent testament to the Calamar-

ain's offensive capabilities. It took a lot to take out

the gravity generators; even with a total power loss,

the superconducting stators that were the heart of

the graviton generators were supposed to keep

spinning for up to six hours. He couldn't remember

the last time he had experienced zero gravity

anywhere aboard the Enterprise, except in the

holodecks, where reduced gravity was sometimes

employed for recreational purposes.

    Starfleet training included zero-G exercises, of

course, but Riker could only hope that the rest of

the crew didn't feel as rusty as he did. The last time

he'd actually done without gravity had been during

his short-lived flight on Zefram Cochrane's Phoe-

nix, and that had hardly been a combat situation,

at least from his perspective. Even the most primi-

tive shuttle had come equipped with its own gravi-

ty for the last hundred years or so. We're not used to

this anymore, he worried, wishing he'd scheduled

more zero-G drills before now.

    Still, the bridge crew did their best to adjust to

the new conditions. Keeping a watchful eye on the

drifting coolant, Clarze ducked his haitiess dome

out of its way. Deanna's hair, already shaken loose

by the previous jolts, snaked Medusa-like about her

face, obscuring her vision, until she neatly tucked

the errant strands back into place. Behind and

above the command area, a scowling Baeta Leyoro

had lost contact with the floor and begun floating

toward the ceiling. Executing an impressive back-

ward somersault, she grabbed the top of the tactical

podium with both hands, then pulled her body

downward until she was once more correctly ori-

ented above the floor. "Get me some gravity

boots," she snapped at the nearest security officer,

who rushed to fulfill the command.

    Following standard procedure, Riker clicked his

chair's emergency restraining belt into place, and

heard Deanna doing the same. The hovering blob

of spilled coolant wafted dangerously near Data's

face, and Riker anticipated a gooey mess, but the

air purification system caught hold of it and sucked

the viscous mess into an intake valve mounted in

the ceiling, just as similar valves cleared the atmo-

sphere of the ashes and bits of debris produced by

the battle. Thank goodness something's still work-

ing right, Riker thought. "Ensign Berglund," he

addressed the young officer at the aft engineering

station, "any chance we can get the gravity back on

line?"

    "It doesn't look good," she reported, holding on

tightly to a vertical station divider with her free

hand. "I'm reading a systemic failure all through

the alpha network." She perused the readouts at

her console avidly. "Maybe if they try reinitializing

the entire system from main engineering?"

    Riker shook his head. He didn't want Geordi

and his people concentrating on anything except

keeping the shields up and running. "Gravity is a

luxury we'll just have to do without for a while."

Easier said than done, he realized. Humanoid

bodies were simply not designed to function with-

out gravity, especially so suddenly; pretty soon,

Barclay wouldn't be the only bridge member sea-

sick. He tapped his combadge. "Riker to Crusher.

I need a medical officer with a hypospray full of

librocalozene right away."

    "Affirmative," Beverly replied. She didn't ask for

an explanation; Riker realized sickbay must have

lost gravity as well. "Ogawa is on her way."

    By foot or by flight? Riker wondered, grateful

that the turbolifts did not require gravity to operate

properly. "Thank you, Doctor." Glancing around

the bridge, he saw that Leyoro's security team

was already distributing magnetic boots from the

emergency storage lockers to every crew member

on the bridge, starting with those standing at the

aft and perimeter stations. The Angosian lieuten-

ant stomped her own boots loudly on the floor as

she regained her footing. "Good work," he told her

tersely, indicating her team's rapid deployment.

    "Standard procedure," she replied, shrugging. "I

figure we're better off facing these stupid BOVs

with our feet firmly on the ground."

    "BOVs?" Riker asked. He didn't recognize the

term, presumably a bit of slang from the Tarsian

War.

    Leyoro flashed him a wolfish grin. "Better Off

Vaporized," she said.

    That might be a bit redundant in this case, he

thought, considering the gaseous nature of their

foes. He appreciated the sentiment, though; he was

getting pretty tired of being knocked around him-

self. But what could you do to an enemy who had

already been reduced to plasma? That was the real

problem, when you got down to it. Explosions and

projectiles weren't much good against an undiffer-

entiated pile of gases. The Calamarain had al-

ready blown themselves to atoms, and it hadn't

hurt them one bit.

    A partial retreat was also an option, he recalled.

True, they couldn't outrun the Calamarain on

impulse alone--that much he knew already--but

maybe they could find a nebula or an asteroid belt

that might provide them with some shelter from

the storm, interfere with the Calamarain's on-

slaught. "Mr. Clarze," he barked, raising his voice

to be heard above the thunder vibrating through

the walls of the starship. "Is there anything nearby

that we could hide behind or within?" Such a

sanctuary, he knew, would have to be within im-

pulse range as long as their warp engines were

down.

    The Deltan helmsman quickly consulted the

readouts on his monitor. "Nothing, sir," he re-

ported glumly, "except the barrier, of course."

    The barrier, Riker thought, sitting bolt upright in

the chair. Now, there's an ideal

    The gravity was out, his little sister was crying,

and Milo Faal didn't know what to do. Ordinarily

weightlessness might have been kind of fun, but not

at the moment. All the loud noises and shaking had

upset Kinya, and none of his usual tricks for

calming her were working at all. His eyes searched

the family's quarters aboard the Enterprise in

search of something he might use to reassure the

toddler or distract her, but nothing presented itself;

Kinya had already rejected every toy he had repli-

cated, even the Wind Dancer hand puppet with the

wiggly ears. The discarded playthings floated like

miniature dirigibles throughout the living room,

propelled by the force with which Kinya hurled

each of them away. Not even this miraculous sight

was enough to end her tantrum. "C'mon, Kinya,"

the eleven-year-old boy urged the little Betazoid

girl hovering in front of him, a couple centimeters

above the floor. Milo himself sat cross-legged atop

a durable Starfleet-issue couch, being careful not to

make any sudden movements while the gravity was

gone; as long as he remained at rest he hoped to

stay at rest. "Don't you want to sing a song?" He

launched into the first few verses of "The Laughing

Vulcan and His Dog'--usually the toddler's favor-

itembut she refused to take the bait, instead cater-

wauling at the top of her lungs. Even worse than the

ear-piercing vocalizations, though, were the waves

of emotional distress pouring out of her, flooding

Milo's empathic senses with his sisters's fear and

unhappiness.

    An experienced Betazoid babysitter, Milo was

adept at tuning out the uncontrolled emanations of

small children, but this was almost more than he

could take. "Please, Kinya," he entreated the tod-

dler, "show me what a big girl you can be."

    Such appeals were usually effective, but not this

time. She kicked her tiny feet against the carpet,

lifting her several centimeters above the floor. Milo

leaned forward carefully and tapped her on the

head to halt the momentum carrying her upward.

 Kinya howled so loudly that Milo was surprised the

 bridge wasn't calling to complain about the noise.

 Not that Kinya was just misbehaving; Milo could

 feel how frightened his sister was, and he didn't

 blame her one bit. To be honest, Milo was getting

 pretty apprehensive himself. This trip aboard the

 Enterprise was turning out to be a lot more intimi-

 dating than he had expected.

    Since their father was missing, like always, and

no one else would tell them what was going on,

Milo had eavesdropped telepathically on the crew

and found out that the Enterprise was engaged in

battle with a dangerous alien life-form. And I

thought this trip would be dull, Milo recalled,

shaking his head. He could use a dose of healthy

boredom right now.

    A thick plane of transparent aluminum, mounted

in the outer wall of the living room, had previously

offered an eye-catching view of the stars zipping

by. Now the rectangular window revealed only the

ominous sight of swollen thunderclouds churning

violently outside the ship. He wasn't sure, but,

judging from what he had picked up from the

occasional stray thoughts, it sounded like the

clouds actually were the aliens, no matter how

creepy that was to think about. The billowing

vapors reminded Milo of an electrical tornado that

had once frightened Milo when he was very young,

during a temporary breakdown of Betazed's envi-

ronmental controls. His baby sister was too small

to remember that incident, but the thunder was

loud and scary enough to make her cry even louder

each time the clouds crashed together.

    Please be quiet, he thought at the toddler. His

throat was sore from emotion, so he spoke to her

mind-to-mind. Everything will be okay, he prom-

ised, hoping he was thinking the truth. There, there.

Ssssh!

    Kinya listened a little. Her insistent bawling

faded to sniffles, and Milo wiped his sister's nose

with a freshly replicated handkerchief. The little

girl was still scared; Milo could sense her acute

anxiety, like a nagging toothache that wouldn't go

away, but Kinya became semi-convinced that her

big brother could protect her. Milo was both

touched and terrified by the child's faith in him. It

was a big responsibility, maybe bigger than he

could handle.

    If only Morn were here, he thought for maybe the

millionth time, taking care to block his pitiful plea

from the other child. But his mother was dead and

nothing would ever change that, no matter how

hard he wished otherwise. And his father might as

well be dead, at least as far as his children were

concerned.

    Despite his best efforts, Kinya must have sensed

his frustration. Tears streamed from a pair of large

brown eyes, gliding away into the air faster than

Milo could wipe them, while her face turned as red

as Klingon disruptors. His sister hovered about the

carpet, surrounded by all the drifting toys and

treats. Kinya grabbed a model Enterprise by its

starboard warp nacelle and began hammering the

air with it, frustrated that she could no longer reach

the floor with it. Tossing the toy ship aside, she

snatched the Wind Dancer puppet as it came

within her grasp and twisted its ears mercilessly.

Kinya managed to abuse the toys without missing a

note in her tearful ululations. Milo wanted to

borrow two cushions from the couch to cover his

own ears, but even that wouldn't have been enough

to block out her outpouring of emotion. It's not

fair, he thought angrily. I shouldn't have to deal

with all this on my own. I'm only eleven/

    Then, to his surprise and relief, he sensed his

father approaching, feeling his presence in his

mind only seconds before he heard his voice in the

corridor outside. His father was very irate, Milo

could tell, and seemed to be arguing with someone,

speaking loudly enough to be heard through the

closed steel door of the guest suite. Now what? he

wondered.

    "This is intolerable!" Lem Faal insisted as the

door slid open. He was a slender, middle-aged man

with receding brown hair, wearing a pale blue lab

coat over a tan suit. "Starfleet Science will hear

about this, I promise you that. I have colleagues on

the Executive Council, including the head of the

Daystrom Institute. You tell your Commander

Riker that. He'll be lucky to command a garbage

scow after I'm through with him!"

 Milo was amazed. Ever since Mom died, his

father had been distant, distracted, and, okay,

irritable sometimes, but Milo had never heard him

go all Klingon at another adult like this. What

could have happened to upset him like this? Look-

ing beyond his father, he spotted a security officer

standing outside the doorway, holding on to his

father's arm. Both men wore standard-issue gravity

boots, and Milo wondered if the gravity had gone

out all over the Enterprise. "I'm sorry, Professor,"

the Earthman said, "but, for your own safety, the

commander thinks it best that you remain in your

quarters for the time being." Milo sensed a degree

of impatience within the officer, as if he had

already explained his position several times before.

    "But my work," Faal protested as the officer

firmly but gently guided him into the living quar-

ters. Milo hopped off the couch and launched

himself toward his father for a closer look at what

was going on. "You have to let me go to Engineer-

ing. It's vital that I complete the preparations for

my experiment. All my research depends on it. My

life's work!"

    Because of his illness, Faal looked much frailer

than his years would suggest. His whole body

trembled as he railed against the unfortunate

guard. Nearing the doorway, Milo slowed his flight

by bouncing back and forth between facing walls.

He winced every time he heard his father wheeze;

each breath squeaked out of his disease-ravaged

lungs.

     "Maybe later," the officer hedged, although Milo

 could tell, as his father surely could, that it wasn't

 going to happen. The guard let go of Faal's arm and

 stepped back into the corridor. "There are extra

 boots in the emergency cupboards," he said, nod-

 ding in Milo's direction. "I'11 be out here if you

 need anything," he said. "Computer, seal doorway.

 Security protocol gamma-one."

    "So I'm under house arrest, is that it?" Faal

challenged him. He grabbed the edge of the door

and tried to stop it from sliding shut. "You dim-

witted Pakled clone, don't you understand what is

at stake? I'm on the verge of the greatest break-

through since the beginning of warp travel, an

evolutionary leap that will open up whole new

horizons and possibilities for humanoids. And

your idiotic Commander Riker is willing to sacri-

fice all that just because some quasi-intelligent gas

cloud is making a fuss. It's insane, don't you see

that?"

    "I'm sorry, sir," the officer said once more,

maintaining a neutral expression. "I have my or-

ders." Faal tried to keep the door open, but his

enfeebled fingers were no match against the inex-

orable progress of the steel door. His hands fell

away as the door slid shut, shielding the unfortu-

nate officer from further scorn.

    Gasping for breath, the scientist leaned against

the closed doorway, his chest heaving. His fruitless

tirade had obviously cost him dearly. His face was

flushed. His large brown eyes were bloodshot. He

ran his hand anxiously through his hair, leaving

stringy brown tufts jutting out in many different

directions. Milo could feel his father's exhaustion

radiating from him. Even with no gravity to fight

against, it wore Milo out just watching him. "Are

you all right, Dad?" he asked, even though they

both knew he wasn't. "Dad?"

    In a telepathic society, there was no way Milo's

father could conceal his illness from his children,

but he had never really spoken to them about it,

either. Milo had been forced to ask the school

computer about "Iverson's disease" on his own. A

lot of the medical terminology had been too ad-

vanced for him, but he had understood what "in-

curable" meant, not to mention "terminal."

    His father reached into the pocket of his lab coat

and produced a loaded hypospray. With a shaky

hand, he pressed the instrument against his shoul-

der. Milo heard a low hiss, then watched as his

father's breathing grew more regular, if not terribly

stronger. None of this came as a surprise to the

boy; he had asked the computer about "polyadren-

aline," too. He knew it only offered temporary

relief from his father's symptoms.

    Sometimes he wished his father had died in that

accident instead of his mother, especially since

Dad was dying anyway. This private thought, kept

carefully locked away where no one could hear,

always brought a pang of guilt, but it was too strong

to be denied entirely. It~ just so unfair/Morn couM

have lived for years ....

     At the moment, though, he was simply glad to

 have his father back at all. "Where have you been,

 Dad?" he asked. He grabbed the doorframe and

 pulled himself downward until his feet were once

 more planted on the carpet. "The ship keeps get-

 ting knocked around and everything started float-

 ing and Kinya won't stop crying and I hear the ship

 is being attacked by aliens and we might get blown

 to pieces. Do you know what the aliens want? Did

 anyone tell you what's going on?"

     "What's that?" his father replied, noticing Milo

 for the first time. He breathed in deeply, the air

 whistling in and out of his congested chest, and

 steadied himself. "What are you talking about?"

    "The aliens!" Milo repeated. Fortunately, their

father's arrival had momentarily silenced the tod-

dler, who teetered on tiny legs before lifting off

from the floor entirely. "I know it's not polite to

listen in on the humans' thoughts, but the alarms

were going off and the floor kept rocking and I

could hear explosions or whatever going off outside

and you were nowhere around and I just had to

know what was happening. Have you seen the

battle, Dad? Is Captain Picard winning?"

    "Picard is gone," Faal said brusquely. A plush

toy kitten drifted in front of his face and he

irritably batted it away. "Some insignificant moron

named Riker is in charge now, someone with no

understanding or respect for the importance of my

work." He seemed to be talking to himself more

than to Milo. "How dare he try to stop me like this!

He's nothing more than a footnote in history. A

flea. A speck."

    This was not the kind of reassurance Milo hoped

for and needed from his father. He~ worried more

about his stupid experiment than us, he realized,

same as always. He tried to remember that his

father was very sick, that he wasn't himself these

days, but he couldn't help feeling resentful again.

"What happened to the captain?" he asked anx-

iously. "Did the aliens kill him?"

    "Please," his father said impatiently, dismissing

Milo's questions with a wave of his hand before

creeping slowly toward his own bedroom. "I can't

deal with this right now," he muttered. "I need to

think. There has to be something I can do, some

way I can convince them. My work is too impor-

tant. Everything depends on it .... "

    Milo stared at this father's back in disbelief. He

didn't even try to conceal his shock and sense of

betrayal. How could Father just ignore him at a

time like this? Never mind me, he thought, what

about my sister? He looked over his shoulder at

Kinya, who was watching her father's departure

with wide, confused eyes. "Daddy?" she asked

plaintively.

    Lightning flashed right outside the living room,

followed by a boom that sounded like it was

coming from the very walls of the guest suite. The

overhead lights flickered briefly, and Milo saw the

force field reinforcing the window sparkle on and

off like a toy Borg shield whose batteries were

 running low. The momentary darkness panicked

 the toddler. Tears streaming from her eyes and

 trailing behind her like the tail of a comet, Kinya

 bounced after her father, arms outstretched and

 beseeching. I know how she feels, Milo thought,

 breathing a sigh of relief as Faal grudgingly plucked

 the tearful girl from the air. "About time," Milo

 murmured, not caring whether his father heard

 him or not.

    But instead of clasping Kinya to his chest, the

scientist kept the whimpering child at arm's length

as he handed Kinya over to Milo, who was momen-

tarily surprised by how weightless she felt. "By the

Chalice," his father wheezed in an exasperated

tone, "can't you handle this?" The model Enter-

prise cruised past his head, provoking a disgusted

scowl. "And do something about these blasted

toys. This is ridiculous." He glanced over Milo at

the tempest beyond the transparent window.

"They're just clouds. How can clouds ruin all my

plans?" he mumbled to himself before disappear-

ing into his private bedchamber. An interior door-

way slid shut, cutting him off from his children

    The total absence of gravity did nothing to

diminish the anger and disillusionment that

crashed down on Milo in the wake of his father's

retreat. Without warning, he found himself stuck

with a semi-hysterical sibling and a murderous rage

he could scarcely contain. No, he thought emphati-

cally. You can't do this. I won't let you.

 Summoning up as much psychic energy as he

could muster, he willed his thoughts through the

closed door and straight into his father's skull.

Help us, please, he demanded, determined to break

through the man's detachment. You can't ignore us

anymore.

    For one brief instant, Milo sensed a tremor of

remorse and regret within Lem Faal's mind; then,

so quickly that it was over even before Milo

realized what had happened, an overpowering

burst of psychic force shoved him roughly out of

his father's consciousness. Mental walls, more im-

pervious than the duranium door sealing Faal's

bedroom, thudded into place between Milo and his

father, shutting him out completely.

    Unable to comprehend what had just occurred,

Kinya blubbered against her brother's chest while,

biting down on his lower lip, Milo fought back

tears of his own. I hate you, he thought at his

father, heedless of who else might hear him. I don't

care if you're dying, I hate you forever.

    On the bridge, six levels away, Deanna Troi felt a

sudden chill, and an unaccountable certainty that

something very precious had just broken beyond

repair.

 

    Still looking slightly green, Lieutenant Barclay

nevertheless stood by his post at the science sta-

tion. His long face pale and clammy, he awkwardly

clambered into the magnetic boots he found wait-

ing there. Judging from his miserable expression,

the only good thing about the total absence of

 gravity upon the bridge was that it couldn't possi-

 bly make him any sicker.

     Riker barely noticed Barday's distress, his atten-

 tion consumed by the daring but risky stratagem

 that had just presented itself to his imagination.

 "Mr. Data," he asked urgently, "if we did enter the

 galactic barrier, what are the odds the Calamarain

 would follow us?"

     "Will!" Deanna whispered to him, alarmed.

 "Surely you're not thinking..." Her words trailed

 off as she spotted the resolute look on Riker's face

 and the daredevil gleam in his eyes. "Are you sure

 this is wise?"

    Maybe not wise, but necessary, he thought. The

Calamarain were literally shaking the Enterprise

apart; the failure of the gravity generators was only

the latest symptom of the beating they had been

taking ever since the cloud-creatures first attacked.

Even if Data managed to invent some ingenious

new way of fighting back against the Calamarain,

they would never be able to implement it without

some sort of respite. At that very moment, an ear-

shattering crash of thunder buffeted the ship, toss-

ing the bridge from side to side with whiplash

intensity. Duranium flooring buckled and a foun-

tain of white-hot sparks erupted only a few centi-

meters from Riker's boots. Feeling the heat upon

his legs, he drew back his feet instinctively even

as a security officer, Caitlin Plummer, hurried

to douse the blaze with a handheld extinguisher.

Startled cries and exclamations reached Riker's

ears as similar fires broke out around the bridge.

With only one foot securely embedded in his

gravity boots, Barclay hopped backward as his

science console spewed a cascade of orange and

golden sparks. His shoulder bumped into Lieuten-

ant Leyoro, who drove him away with a fierce stare

that seemed to frighten him even more than the

flames. "E-excuse me," he stammered. "I'll just

stand over here if you don't mind .... "

    Despite the tumult, Data promptly responded to

Riker's query. "Without a better understanding of

the Calamarain's psychology, I cannot accurately

predict their behavior should we penetrate the

barrier."

    Of course, Riker reprimanded himself, I should

have guessed as much. "What about us? How long

could we last in there?"

    Data replied so calmly that Riker would have bet

a stack of gold-pressed latinurn that the android

had deactivated his emotion chip for the duration

of the crisis. "With our shields already failing, I

cannot guarantee that the ship would survive at all

once we passed beyond the event horizon of the

barrier. Furthermore, even if the Enterprise with-

stood the physical pressures of the barrier, the

overwhelming psychic energies at work within it

would surely pose a hazard to the entire crew."

    "What about Professor Faal's plan?" he asked,

grasping at straws. "Can we try opening up an

 artificial wormhole through the barrier, maybe use

 that as an escape route?" It would be ironic, Riker

 thought, if Faal's experiment, the very thing that

 had ignited this crisis, proved to be their ultimate

 salvation. Still, he was more than willing to let Faal

 have the last laugh if it meant preserving the

 Enterprise. Lord knows he didn't have any better

 ideas.

    Data dashed his hopes, meager as they were.

"The professor's theory and technology remain

untested," he reminded Riker. "Furthermore, to

initiate the wormhole it would be necessary to

launch the modified torpedo containing the profes-

sor's magneton pulse emitter into the barrier, but

there is a ninety-eight-point-six-four percent prob-

ability that the Calamarain would destroy any

torpedo we launch before it could reach the barri-

er." Data cocked his head as he gave the matter

further thought. "In any event, even if we could

successfully implement the experiment, there is no

logical reason why the Calamarain could not sim-

ply follow the Enterprise through the wormhole."

    Damn, Riker thought, discouraged by Data's

cold assessment of his desperate scheme. The first

officer was willing to gamble with the ship's safety

if necessary, but there was no point in committing

suicide, which seemed to be what Data thought of

Riker's plan. Never mind the wormhole, he railed

inwardly, I should have tried entering the barrier

earlier, when our shields were in better shape. But

how could he have known just how bad things

would get? Why wouldn't the Calamarain listen to

reason?

    Turbolift doors slid open and Alyssa Ogawa

rushed onto the bridge, a full medkit trailing

behind her like a balloon on a leash. Gravity boots

kept her rooted to the floor. "Reporting as ordered,

sir," she said to Riker.

    "Thank you, Nurse," he answered. "Please give

everyone on the bridge, except Mr. Data, of course,

a dose of librocalozene to head off any zero-G

sickness." He glanced behind him where Barclay

was still keeping a safe distance from both the

smoking science console and Lieutenant Leyoro.

"You can start with Mr. Barclay."

    "Ummm, I'm allergic to librocalozene," Barclay

whimpered, clutching his stomach. "Do you have

isomethozine instead?

Ogawa nodded and adjusted the hypospray.

Riker repressed a groan. He didn't have time to

deal with this. "Do Ensign Clarze next," he ad-

vised Ogawa. The last thing he needed was a

queasy navigator. As the nurse went to work, he

returned his attention to Data.

    "One further consideration regarding the barri-

er," the android added. "Starfleet records indicate

that the danger posed by the barrier's psychic

component increases proportionally to the tele-

pathic abilities of certain humanoid species." He

looked pointedly at Troi. "Please forgive me,

 Counselor. I do not mean to alarm you, but it is

 important that Commander Riker fully compre-

 hend what is at risk."

     "I understand, Data," she said, not entirely

 concealing the anxiety in her voice.

     So do I, Riker thought. If he did dare to brave to

 barrier, Deanna would almost surely be the first

 casualty. Not to mention Professor Faal and his

 children, he realized. They were from Betazed, too,

 and, being fully Betazoid, even more telepathically

 gifted than Deanna. Flying into the barrier would

 surely doom the children. Could he actually give

 that command, even to save the rest of the crew?

    "Do whatever you have to, Will," Deanna urged

him. "Don't worry about me."

    How can I not? he asked her silently, already

dreading the pain of her loss. But Deanna was a

Starfleet officer. In theory, she risked her life every

time they encountered a new life-form or phenom-

enon. He couldn't let his personal feelings influ-

ence his decision. If only I could switch off my own

emotion chip, he thought.

    "Shields down to twelve percent," Leyoro an-

nounced. She didn't remind Riker that time was

running out. She didn't need to. Working briskly

and efficiently, Ogawa pressed her hypospray

against Leyoro's upper arm, then moved on to

Deanna. Riker hoped she wasn't wasting her time;

if their shields collapsed entirely, they'd all have a

lot more to worry about than a touch of space

sickness. Too bad we can't inoculate the crew

against a tachyon barrage.

    Frustration gnawed at his guts. "Blast it," he

cursed. "We can't stay here and we can't risk the

barrier. So what in blazes are we supposed to do?"

    To his surprise, a tremulous voice piped up.

"Excuse me, Commander," Barclay said, "but I

may have an idea."

"I DON'T UNDERSTAND," THE YOUNG Q SAID. "What

are we doing back here? I mean, it's a fascinating

site, but I thought you'd seen enough of it."

    Looking on, quite unseen, Picard wondered the

same. He found himself once more facing the legen-

dary alien artifact known as the Guardian of For-

ever, as did 0 and young Q. The immeasurably

ancient stone portal looked exactly as it had the first

time Q had brought him here: a rough-hewn torus,

standing five meters high at its peak and surrounded

by crumbling ruins of vaguely Grecian design. It

was through this portal, he recalled, that the young

Q had first drawn 0 into reality as Picard knew it.

 

"Never again my plans gone astray,

Never again my life locked away,

 

Never again to die,

Never again, say L..."

 

    0 sang softly to himself in a voice little more

than a whisper; the song seemed to have special

meaning to him. Could it refer, Picard wondered,

to the recent debacle with the Coulalakritous? The

stranger's archaic garments, he observed, no longer

bore the scars of that confrontation. 0 limped

across the rubble-strewn wasteland until he was

directly in front of the Guardian. "Listen to me,

you decrepit doorway," he addressed it, placing

his hands upon his hips and striking a defiant

pose. The shifting winds blew swirls of gritty

powder around his ankles. "I'm not fond of you

and I know you don't approve of me, but you're in

no position to be picky about whom you choose to

serve. I'm stronger now than when last we met,

and getting more like my old self with every tick of

the clock." He bent over and lifted a fist-sized

chunk of dusty marble from the ground, then held

it out before him. The solid marble burst into

flames upon his palm, but 0 did not flinch from

the fiery display, continuing to hold the burning

marble until it was completely incinerated. When

nothing was left but a handful of smoking ashes,

he flung the smoldering residue onto the ground

between him and the portal. "I trust we under-

stand each other."

 "I COMPREHEND YOUR MEANING," the

 Guardian said, its stentorian voice echoing off the

 fallen marble columns and shattered temples

 around it. "WHAT AND WHERE DO YOU DE-

 SIRE TO BEHOLD?"

    0 glanced back at the young Q, who sat upon a

set of cracked granite steps several meters behind

his companion, looking confused but intrigued. "I

knew I could make this antiquated archway see

reason," he told Q with a conspiratorial wink, "and

the question's not where, but whom." Turning back

toward the portal, he opened his mouth again, but

what next emerged from his lips bore no resem-

blance to any language Picard had ever heard, with

or without access to a Universal Translator. In-

deed, he didn't seem to hear the words so much as

he felt them seeping into his skin, burrowing

directly into some primordial back chamber of his

brain. He looked away from 0, back at Q's earlier

self, and saw that the youth appeared just as baffled

as Picard.

    "What sort of language is that?" Picard asked

the older Q standing beside him. He placed his

hands over his ears, but the sounds--or whatever

they were--still penetrated his mind. "What is he

saying?"

    Q shrugged. "I didn't know then," he said in a

fatalistic tone, "and I don't know now. A call to

arms, I imagine, or maybe just a list of names and

addresses." He leaned against a tilted marble col-

umn and shook his head sadly. "What's important

is, they heard him."

    "Who?" Picard demanded, shouting in hopes of

drowning out the unsettling effect of O's inhuman

ululation. It didn't work, but Q managed to hear

him anyway.

    "Them," he said venomously. He pointed past

the imperious figure of 0 to the open portal itself.

As before, a thick white mist began to stream from

the top of the archway, spilling over onto the arid

ground at O's feet. Peering through the haze, Picard

saw a procession of historical images rushing be-

fore his eyes like a holonovel on fast-forward. The

races and cultures depicted were unfamiliar to him,

and Picard was extraordinarily well versed in the

history of much of the Alpha Quadrant, but, as one

image gave way to another at frightening speed, he

thought he could begin to discern a recurring

theme:

    Larval invertebrates emerge from silken cocoons

and proceed to devour their insectile parents. Ado-

lescent humanoids, covered in downy chartreuse

feathers, riot in the streets of an elegant and

sophisticated metropolis, toppling avian idols and

putting ancient aeries to the torch. A lunar colony

declares its independence, unleashing a devastating

salvo of nuclear missiles against its homeworld.

    Generational conflict, Picard realized, seizing on

the common thread. The new violently destroying

the old.

    0 stretched out his hand toward the portal,

beckoning with his fingers, and a figure emerged

 from the haze, stepping out from the parade of

 matricidal and patricidal horrors to assume form

 and definition outside the portal. He was a silver-

 haired humanoid of angelic demeanor, resplendent

 in shimmering amethyst robes that billowed about

 him from the neck down. A sea-green aura sur-

 rounded him, blurring his features somewhat, and,

 despite his humanoid mien, he failed to achieve

 any true solidity, resembling a glimmering mirage

 more than an actual being of flesh and blood. He

 did not look particularly dangerous, but Picard

 suspected that first impressions might be decep-

 tive, especially where any confederate of O's was

 concerned.

     "Gorgan, my old friend," 0 greeted him, lapsing

 into conventional speech. "It's been too long."

    "Longer for you, I suspect, than for any other."

Gorgan's deep voice echoed strangely among the

barren ruins, sounding artificially amplified. He

tipped his head deferentially, revealing an immac-

ulate silver mane that swept back and away from

his broad, expansive brow. Beneath the greenish

glow, his face seemed pinkish in hue. "I am at your

service, my liege."

    0 accepted the other's expression of fealty with-

out question. "We have plenty to discuss, but stand

aside now while I round up more of our comrades

from departed days."

    Gorgan stepped away from the portal, seemingly

content to await O's convenience, but the young Q

was incapable of such patience. "Wait just one

nanosecond," he called out, springing up from the

battered stone steps. "I'm not so sure about this. I

agreed to accept responsibility for you, not...

whoever this is." He gestured toward Gorgan, who

regarded him with what looked like wry amuse-

ment. The newcomer's apparent lack of concern

about Q's identity and objections only rankled the

youth further. "I insist you tell me what in the

Continuum you think you're doing."

    "I'm not thinking anything," 0 said brusquely.

"I'm doing it, and never mind the Continuum." He

reached out once more for the portal and there was

a momentary flicker within its aperture as the

Guardian appeared to shift its focus. A flustered Q,

having clearly lost control of the situation, stum-

bled hesitantly toward 0. Despite his evident un-

ease, he also appeared consumed by curiosity.

"Don't worry so much," 0 reassured him. "I prom-

ise you won't be bored."

    "You can say that again," the older Q remarked

gloomily.

    Visions from the past or future cascaded beneath

the arch of the Guardian, capturing the attention of

both the young Q and Picard. Although Gorgan's

face remained benignly serene, an avid gleam crept

into his eyes as he watched the historical vistas

unfold:

    Tribes of fur-clad savages hurl rocks and sharp-

ened bones at each other amid a primeval forest.

Mighty armies clash on battlegrounds awash in

turquoise blood, the ring of metal against metal

echoing alongside the cries of the wounded and the

dying. A fleet of sailing ships sinks beneath the

waves of an alien sea, their wooden masts and hulls

torn asunder by blazing fireballs flung by catapults

upon the shore. Mechanized steel dreadnoughts

roll through the blasted rubble of an embattled city

while bombs fall like poisonous spores from the

smoke-choked sky, blooming into flowery displays

of red-orange conflagration. In the hazardous

confines of a teeming asteroid belt, daring star

pilots flying sleek one-man vessels wage a nerve-

wracking, hyperkinetic, deep-space dogfight, exe-

cuting impossible turns as they fire coruscating

blasts of pure destructive energy at enemy space-

craft performing equally risky maneuvers; the eter-

nal night of space lights up like the dawn for a

fraction of a second every time a sizzling beam

strikes home or a brazenly fragile ship collides with

an asteroid that got too close.

    Picard had no difficulty identifying the theme of

this grisly pageant. War, he realized, appalled by

the sheer bloody waste of it all even as he was

struck by the foolhardy courage of the combatants.

War, pure and simple.

    Called forth from the billowing fog, another

entity emerged from the time portal. Even more so

than Gorgan, however, this being lacked (or per-

haps declined) human form, manifesting as a flick-

ering sphere of crimson energy spinning fiercely

about two meters above the ground, casting a faint

red radiance on the dust and debris below. No

sound emerged from the sphere, nor did its passage

produce so much as a breeze to rustle the gritty

powder it glided over. Whatever this entity was, it

seemed even more immaterial than the gaseous

Coulalakritous, consisting like Gorgan of undi-

luted energy, not matter at all. Much like the energy

being who impregnated Deanna Troi several years

ago, Picard recalled, or perhaps the entity who

possessed me during the Antican-Selay peace nego-

tiations. Indeed, Starfleet had discovered so many

noncorporeal life-forms over the last couple cen-

turies that Picard sometimes wondered if sentient

energy was actually as common throughout the

galaxy as organic life had proven to be. Judging

from their appearance, both Gorgan and this new

entity provided support for such a supposition.

    "Hello again, (*)," 0 said to the shimmering

sphere, and Picard hoped he would never need to

pronounce that name himself, if that was in fact

what the energy creature was called. "Welcome to a

whole new arena, billions upon billions of new

worlds, all waiting for us."

    If(*) responded to 0, it did not do so in any form

Picard could hear. Instead it simply spun silently in

the air, undisturbed by the errant gusts of wind

that blew perpetually throughout the ruins. Mov-

ing away from the Guardian, it passed straight

 through a solid marble column, emerging un-

 changed from the other side of the truncated

 masonry. Perhaps at O's direction, it joined Gorgan

 at the sidelines, hovering a few centimeters above

 the robed man's head. The crimson glow of (*)

 overlapped with the other's greenish aura, yielding

 a zone of brown shadows between them.

     Stalled halfway between the steps and 0, the

 young Q inspected the rotating sphere with inter-

 est, then remembered his doubts about this entire

 procedure. "See here, 0, I can't just stand by while

 you conduct all this... unauthorized immigra-

 tion. I don't know a thing about these entities

 you're so blithely importing into my multiverse."

 He strode forward and laid a restraining hand upon

 O's shoulder. "Can't you at least tell me what this is

 all about?"

    "All in good time," 0 said gruffly. Looking back

over his shoulder, he glowered at Q with enough

menace to make the younger being withdraw his

hand and step backward involuntarily. Q gulped

nervously, his eyes wide and uncertain. His gaze

fixed on his would-be mentor, he failed to notice

Gorgan and (*) advancing on him with deliberate,

predatory intent. A cruel smile appeared on the

humanoid's lips while the glowing sphere rotated

faster in anticipation. Gorgan's features shifted

behind his luminous aura, growing subtly more

bestial. The threat of violence, metaphysical or

otherwise, hung over the scene, although Picard

could not tell how much the young Q was aware of

his present jeopardy. All his anxious wariness

seemed directed at 0 and what he might do next.

Picard found himself in the odd position of sympa-

thizing with Q, even though, intellectually, he

recognized that the young Q could not possibly

suffer irreparable harm at this point in history

since he had to survive long enough to afflict Picard

in the future. Unless, he reluctantly acknowledged,

Q is about to throw another blasted time paradox

at me.

    To Picard's surprise, and the young Q's relief, 0

abruptly switched modes, adopting a more conge-

nial attitude. His eyes no longer intimidated and

his voice grew more ingratiating. Temporarily

turning his back on the Guardian, he strove to

allay Q's reservations while, unseen by Q, Gorgan

and (*) quietly retreated to their earlier posts.

"Unauthorized immigration? Really, Q, that

doesn't sound like you. You weren't so cautious

and conservative when you rescued me from that

loathsome limbo, or when you so eloquently ar-

gued my case before the Continuum. As I recall,

you stated pretty boldly that the Continuum could

use some fresh blood and new ideas. Well, here

they are," he said, an arm sweeping out to indicate

(*) and Gorgan. "Don't tell me you've changed

your mind now."

    "Well, no. Not exactly," Q replied. He glanced

over at Gorgan, who graced him with a beatific

smile entirely unlike the one he had affected while

 stalking Q from behind. "It's just that this is

 somewhat more than I had in mind."

     "You wanted the unknown," 0 reminded him.

 "You wanted to have an impact on the universe,

 bring about something new."

     "Yes, but..." Q stammered. "These beings...

 who are they exactly? What do they want?"

    "To help us, of course," 0 asserted, "in our grand

and glorious campaign to elevate the standards of

sentient life throughout this galaxy. What else?"

He beamed at the specter and the sphere lurking on

the periphery of the discussion. "I know these

faithful fellows from days gone by and can vouch

for them wholeheartedly. That must be good

enough to overcome any dismal doubts you might

have? After all, you vouched for me."

    "I suppose," Q said dubiously. He looked from 0

to the mysterious pair and back again, perhaps

realizing for the first time that he was distinctly

outnumbered. He sighed and squinted at the fog

streaming out of the time portal. "But how much

new blood exactly were you planning to extract

from that thing?"

    "Just one more old acquaintance," 0 promised,

grinning at Q's gradual acquiescence. "Then, trust

me, we'll have all the support we need to embark

on any crusade we choose... for the good of this

entire reality, naturally." He called upon the new-

comers to back up his claim. "Isn't that so, fellows?

You're with us through thick and thin, aren't you?"

"Absolutely," Gorgan purred. Something about

his manner brought an old phrase to Picard's

mind: First thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers. "I

look forward to continuing our work in this brave

new dimension, as I also anticipate getting to know

this fine young entity."

    His bodiless cohort merely hung in the air, its

crimson radiance pulsing like a heartbeat. Picard

found it hurt his eyes to stare at (*) for too long.

That's enough to give one a headache, he thought.

Not a pleasant prospect, this far from sickbay.

    "You know," the older Q commented. "I never

did warm to those two, especially that sanguinary

fellow spinning like a pinwheel over there. No

sense of subtlety whatsoever. You should have seen

what a slaughterhouse he made of Cheron later

on."

    Cheron? Picard vaguely remembered an ancient

civilization that was supposed to have destroyed

itself via racial warfare some fifty thousand years

before his own century. Was Q implying that this

extradimensional visitor would eventually be re-

sponsible for the extinction of an entire species?

    "Of course, I still run into them now and again,"

Q continued. "Now, that's awkward, I must tell

you. Of course, they usually have the sense to go

scurrying off into some miserable, insignificant

comer of the cosmos whenever they sense me

drawing near. And good riddance, I say."

    "What are you saying, Q?" Picard asked, dis-

turbed by the implications of Q's remarks. "That

these beings still exist in our own era?"

     "Your own era," Q corrected him archly. "I

 refuse to be tied down to any specific time or place,

 present attire notwithstanding." He tugged on the

 gray jacket of his imitation Starfleet uniform,

 straightening its lines. "Besides, let's not get too far

 ahead of ourselves, shall we? We can handle the

 historical footnotes later. There is still more to be

 seen here," he instructed Picard. "Behold."

     Now flanked by Gorgan and (*), Q's younger self

 stood by helplessly, torn between anxiety and an-

 ticipation, as 0 advanced on the Guardian for what

 he had vowed would be the last time. Once more

 that eldritch keening flowed from O's mouth, in-

 voking another cavalcade of frightful images with-

 in the open maw of the portal:

    An untamed tornado ravages a cultivated land-

scape, destroying vast orchards of alien fruit and

tossing dome-shaped farms and storage facilities

into the fevered sky along with the graceful reptiles

who tended to the land. An earthquake rips

through the heart of a populous community, the

tremors opening up gaping chasms that swallow up

entire parks and buildings. A majestic chain of

volcanos erupts after centuries of dormancy, spew-

ing ash and fire into the heavens and spilling

torrents of plutonic lava onto half a continent,

instantly reducing a thriving nation, thick with

citizenry, into a smoking wasteland. Oceans of

water pour from enormous clouds as a flood of

biblical proportions sweeps over one unfortunate

world; the deluge swiftly drowns every living thing

that walked or crawled or slithered upon the sur-

face, the evolution of millennia lost beneath the

swelling sea.

    These were no mere rebellions or self-inflicted

wars, Picard recognized, not simply conflicts be-

tween sentient and sentient, but unequal struggles

pitting mortal beings against the awesome power of

nature at its most destructive. Unprovoked catas-

trophes: what ancient historians and jurists once

labeled "acts of God."

    With eerie appropriateness, what came next

through the portal was nothing less than a veritable

pillar of fire. Composed entirely of dancing scarlet

flames, it snaked horizontally through the steaming

gateway, then rose upward like a rearing serpent to

achieve a height of over fifty meters above the

desolate ruins. Picard felt the heat of the blazing

column upon his face and he had to tilt his head

back to spy the apex of the looming inferno, which

he estimated to be at least two meters in diameter.

Was this colossal torch truly an intelligent entity

like the others Q had drawn from the portal? he

wondered. It was hard to see it as anything other

than an incredible thermal phenomenon, but Pi-

card guessed that was not the case.

    "As you have summoned Me, so have I come,"

the tower of flame proclaimed, confirming the

captain's assumption. Its voice was nearly as so-

norous as the Guardian's, although a touch more

 human in tone, having a firm yet paternal quality.

 "Let worlds without number prepare for My Judg-

 ment and tremble at My Wrath."

     0 laughed out loud at the flaming column's

 words. "You don't need to put on such lofty airs on

 my account. I've known you too long for that." He

 strolled casually around the circumference of the

 pillar, heedless of the blistering heat radiating from

 it, clucking at its awesome dimensions. "Maybe

 you could see your way clear to taking on a

 more... approachable appearance." He shook his

 head wearily. "It's like talking to a bloody forest

 fire."

     "Let it be as you request," the tower answered,

 sounding slightly miffed. "Many are My Faces. As

 numerous as the stars are the manifestations of My

 Glory."

    "Someone thinks highly of himself," the older Q

said snidely. "Or should that be Himself?."

    Picard was too engrossed by the fiery pillar's

sudden transformation to acknowledge Q's re-

mark. Before his gaping eyes, the huge column of

swirling flame contracted into the shape of a man,

then rapidly cooled to the consistency of human

flesh. The newborn figure stood a few centimeters

taller than 0 and was sheathed in gleaming armor

of solid gold. His stern features were adorned by a

flowing, snow-white beard; Picard found himself

reminded of face of Michelangelo's famous por-

trait of Moses, and was momentarily disappointed

 that He wasn't actually carrying two inscribed

 stone tablets. The thought occurred to him that

 such Old Testament imagery, including the pillar

 of fire itself, still lay countless aeons in the future.

 "Q--" he began.

    The elder Q held up his palm. "Before you

ask... no, this is not how I, as a Q, perceived O's

motley band of recruits. Instead this is how they

would appearmand will appear--to humanoids

such as yourself, according to your own rudimenta-

ry senses."

    I suspected as much, Picard thought. As the

young Q approached the forbidding new arrival,

the captain wished he could fully understand how

this latest visitor appeared to Q's earlier self. If

only I couM see through Q~ metaphors to what is

actually happening.

    "Excuse me," young Q said to the armor-clad

stranger. "Who are you?"

    "I am The One," He replied, His arms crossed

stiffly atop His chest.

"The One?" inquired Q, who was after all only a

Q.

    "He invented monotheism," 0 explained with a

shrug. "Indulge Him." He raised his voice to

address the entire gathering. "Old friends and

comrades, call me 0 now, for I've put the pitfalls

and purgatory of the past behind me. I offer you an

opportunity to do the same. There are dazzling

days ahead, I promise you!" Throwing an arm over

 Q's shoulder, he spun the youth around so hard

 that the toes of Q's boots were dragged through the

 dust and debris. "Now let me introduce to you our

 proud patron, as well as our native guide to these

 parts, my good friend and rescuer... Q."

    The three from the portal spread out around Q

and 0, then drew in closer, surrounding the young

Q, who, from where Picard was standing, seemed

to be not so much basking in the attention as trying

with visible effort to maintain a cocky and confi-

dent air despite the fact that, O's flattery notwith-

standing, he had rather quickly gone from being O's

all-knowing host and chaperon to ending up as the

newest and junior member of a well-established

group where everyone knew each other, and their

actual agenda, much better than he did. "So," he

said breezily, ducking out from under O's arm

while trying to slip unobtrusively out between

Gotgan and The One, "how long have you fellows

known 07"

    "Long enough," Gorgan asserted, pressing in

upon Q and blocking his escape. The more Picard

listened to it, the more Gorgan's voice seemed to

be generated artificially rather than through the

normal action of lungs and vocal cords. The shim-

mering stranger was only simulating humanity,

and not entirely successfully. "Long enough to

know where our best interests lie. And yours."

    "Be strong in My Ways," The One added, "and

you will shall surely prosper. Falter, and your days

shall be filled with sorrow." He laid his hand upon

Q's shoulder, and the young godling flinched in-

stinctively, stumbling backward into the hovering

presence of (*). His body fell through the glowing

sphere, receiving what looked like some manner of

jolt or chill. Emerging behind (*), Q gasped and

continued to fall until he landed in a sitting posi-

tion upon the ground, his limbs trembling and his

eyes and mouth wide open. The palpitations

quickly subsided, but Q's expression remained

dazed.

    "Watch yourself," 0 warned him. He took Q by

the hand and helped him to his feet. His associates

kept their distance this time, granting the jittery Q

a bit more personal space. "There's nothing to be

skittish about. We're all on the same side here."

The deep lines carved into O's weathered visage

stretched to accommodate his toothy grin. "Stick

with us, Q, and we'll have a fine time, you'll see.

This great, gorgeous galaxy will never be the

same."

    "Skittish? Me?" Q said loudly, pulling together a

semblance of self-assurance. "I'm nothing of the

sort." He brushed the clingy dust from his trousers

with elaborate indifference. "I'm simply unaccus-

tomed to so much like-minded company. I've al-

ways been something of a lone wolf within the

Continuum."

    "And a black sheep, too, I think," 0 surmised.

"No use denying it; it's as obvious as the smug

 somnambulism of the other Q. Well, you're not

 alone anymore, my friend. Rest assured, you're one

 of us now."

     "Lucky me," the older Q observed from within

 the shadow of a tilted Doric column.

     "Fallen in with a bad crowd, have we?" Picard

 said. He shook his head, feeling a tad disillusioned

 that the errors of Q's youth would prove to be so

 mundane. "It's an old story, Q."

     "Older than you know," Q stated, "and more

 serious than you can possibly imagine."

    How so? Picard wondered. Examining the scene,

he noted that, beyond the congregation of super-

beings, the Guardian of Forever had fallen still and

silent. The last thin ribbons of mist dissipated into

the atmosphere of the lonely setting while the

empty aperture at the center of the Guardian

offered only a view of the fallen temples on the

other side of the portal. It appeared that whatever

intelligence inhabited the Guardian had taken 0 at

his word that there would be no further corridors

opened between this reality and whatever distant

realm 0 and his cohorts originated from. Just as

well, Picard concluded. Judging from the older Q's

ominous remarks, these four would prove danger-

ous enough.

    He peered at the new arrivals. Something about

them, particularly Gorgan, struck a chord in his

memory, but one he couldn't quite place. He felt

certain that he had never personally encountered

any of these entities before, but perhaps he had

reviewed some record of their existence. The bur-

ied memory teased him, and he wished he had

immediate access to the Enterprise's memory

banks. Perhaps something from Starfleet records,

maybe even from the logs of one or more of the

earlier Starships Enterprise. "Gorgan," he mut-

tered. "Where have I heard that name before?"

    "Stardate 5029.5," Q volunteered helpfully. "In

and around the planet Triacus. Before your time, of

course, but I believe one of your predecessors had

an unpleasant encounter with the ever-insinuating

Gorgan. One James T. Kirk, to be exact." Q rested

his chin upon the knuckles of one hand, striking a

meditative pose. "Speaking of which, one of these

days I really should go back a generation or so

before your birth and see if Starfleet captains were

always as humorless as you are."

    Don't even think about it, Picard thought vehe-

mently. Kirk and his crew had run into enough

challenges during their long careers without the

added aggravation of coping with Q. Meanwhile,

he searched his memory for details regarding the

original Enterprise's contact with Gorgan. He

dimly recalled several incidents in which Kirk's

crew faced powerful beings along the lines of Q and

0. Was Gorgan the one who hijacked the Enterprise

using some brainwashed children, or the one who

turned out to be Jack the Ripper? Given the

rampant generational strife in the images preced-

ing Gorgan's entrance, he guessed the former.

 "What about that one?" Picard asked, pointing

 to the spinning globe of crimson light. He asked

 partly out of curiosity, partly to distract Q from his

 alarming notion of visiting the twenty-third cen-

 tury.

     "I believe your Starfleet database refers to it as

 the 'Beta XII-A entity,' named for the rather for-

 gettable world where your kind first made its

 acquaintance." Q scowled at the shining energy

 creature. "A deceptively innocuous name, in my

 opinion, for so bloody-minded a presence."

    Beta XII-A, Picard memorized dutifully. That,

too, sounded familiar, although Starfleet had

charted too many planets for him to pinpoint its

location and history immediately, not without

Data's total recall. He resolved to research the

matter thoroughly if and when Q deigned to return

him to the Enterprise. "And what of the final

entity?" he asked Q. "The one who calls himself

The One?"

    Q rolled his eyes. "What do I look like, an

information booth? All will become clear in time,

Jean-Luc. Rather than subject me to this plodding

interrogation, you would do better to observe what

transpires now." He diverted Picard's attention

back to the curious assemblage several meters

away.

    0 had just finished recounting his and Q's recent

altercation with the Coulalakritous to Gorgan and

the others. "Looking back," he admitted, "we

should have started off with a more underdevel-

oped breed of subjects, the sort less capable of

violating the spirit of the test." He paced back and

forth through the broken masonry, dragging his

bad leg behind him. "Yes, that's the idea. We need

to be more selective next time. Choose just the

right specimens. Advanced enough to be interest-

ing, naturally, but not evolved enough to skew the

learning curve." He stopped in front of the young

Q and eyed his designated host and guardian

expectantly. "This is your neck of the woods, my

boy. Any likely candidates come to mind?"

    Q looked grateful to occupy center stage again.

The one advantage he had over the others was his

superior knowledge of this particular reality. "Let

me think," he said, scrunching up his face in

concentration. His foot tapped impatiently in the

dusty gravel as he looked inward for the answer. A

second later, his face lighted up as an idea occurred

to him; Picard half expected a lightbulb to literally

materialize over the young Q's head, but, to his

relief, no such absurdity occurred. "There's always

the Tkon Empire," he suggested.

    Picard could not have been more startled if the

young Q had suddenly proposed a three-week

debauch on Risa. The Tkon Empire, he thought

numbly, transfixed by shock and a growing sense of

horror. Oh, my God....

 

Chapter Five

 

"COME AGAIN.?" RIKER ASKED.

    "It's true," Barclay insisted. "I examined the

probe that we sent toward the galactic barrier, the

one we transported back to the ship after the Cal-

amarain attacked, and I discovered that the bio-gel

paks in the probe had absorbed some psychokinet-

ic energy from the barrier itself, partially protecting

them from the Calamarain's tachyon bursts." He

waved a tricorder in Riker's face, a little too close

for comfort. "It's all here. I was going to report back

to Mr. La Forge about what I found, but then

Professor Faal insisted on coming to the bridge,

and I had to follow him, and then you assigned me

to the science station after Ensign Schultz was

injured--"

 Riker held up a hand to halt the uncontrolled

flood of words pouring from Barclay's mouth.

Sometimes, in his own way, the hapless officer

could be just as long-winded as Data used to be,

and as slow to come to the point. Riker took the

tricorder from Barclay and handed it off to Data

for analysis. "Slow down," he ordered. "How can

this help us now?"

    He wasn't just being impatient; with the Cala-

marain pounding on the ship and their shields in

danger of collapsing, Riker couldn't afford to waste

a moment. To be honest, he had completely forgot-

ten about that probe until Barclay mentioned it,

and he still wasn't sure what relevance it had to

their present circumstances. As far as he was con-

cerned, their entire mission concerning the galactic

barrier had already been scrapped. His only goal

now was to keep both the ship and the crew intact

for a few more hours.

    "The Enterprise-E has the new bio-gel paks,

too," Barclay explained, "running through the en-

tire computer processing system, which is directly

linked to the tactical deflector system." He leaned

against the back of the captain's chair and closed

his eyes for a moment. Riker guessed that the lack

of gravity upon the bridge was not helping Bar-

day's shaky stomach any.

    "Sit down," he suggested, indicating the empty

seat where the first officer usually sat when he

wasn't filling in for the captain. Barclay sank grate-

fully into the chair, his magnetic boots clanging

against the floor as he moved. "All this bio-organic

 technology is still pretty new to me," Riker admit-

 ted. The first Starfleet vessel to employ the new

 organic computer systems, he recalled, had been

 the ill-fated U.S.S. Voyager, now stranded some-

 where in the Delta Quadrant. Hardly the most

 promising of pedigrees, even though its bio-gel

 paks were hardly responsible for Voyager's predica-

 ment. "What does this have to do with current

 situation?"

    "Oh, the bio-gel is wonderful stuff," Barclay

declared, scientific enthusiasm overcoming nausea

for the moment, "several orders of magnitude

faster than the old synthetic subprocessors, and

easier to replace." Riker sensed a lecture coming

on, but Barclay caught himself in time and cut to

the chase. "Anyway, if the ship's bio-gel paks

absorb enough psychokinetic energy from the bar-

rier, maybe we can divert that energy to the deflec-

tors to protect us from barrier itself. In effect, we

could use part of the galactic barrier's own power

to maintain our shields. Like a fire wall, sort of. It's

the perfect solution!"

    "Maybe," Riker said, not yet convinced. The

Enterprise was a lot bigger and more complicated

than a simple probe. Besides, if any crew member

was going to pull a high-tech rabbit out of his or her

hat, Riker would have frankly preferred someone

besides Reginald Barclay. No offense, he thought,

but where cutting-edge science is concerned I have a

lot more faith in Data or Geordi. He turned toward

Data. "Is this doable?" he asked the android.

    "The data Lieutenant Barclay has recorded is

quite provocative," Data reported. "There are too

many variables to guarantee success, but it is a

workable hypothesis."

    "Excuse me, Commander," Alyssa Ogawa said

as she came up beside him. Riker felt the press of a

hypospray against his forearm, followed by the

distinctive tingle of medicinal infusion. Even

though he had not suffered any negative effects

from the zero gravity yet, he derived a twinge of

relief from the procedure. One less thing to worry

about, he thought.

    "Shields down to ten percent," Baeta Leyoro

stated, continuing her countdown toward doom. A

rumble of thunder and a flash of electrical fire

accented her warning. The jolt shook the tricorder

free from Data's grip and the instrument began to

float toward the ceiling. Data reached for the

tricorder, but its momentum had already carried

the tricorder beyond his reach. "Hang on," Leyoro

said, plucking her combadge from her chest. She

hurled the badge like a discus and it spun through

the air until it collided with the airborne tricorder.

The force of the collision sent both objects rico-

cheting backward toward their respective points of

origin. Leyoro snatched the badge out of the air

even as the tricorder soared back toward Data's

waiting fingers. "Just a little trick I picked up on

Lunar V," she said, referring to the penal colony

where she and the other Angosian veterans had

once been incarcerated.

     Remind me not to play racquetball with her,

 Riker thought. Or a game of dom-jot, for that

 matter.

     "Sir, we're sitting ducks here," she said. "We

 have to do something, and fast."

     Riker made his decision. "Let's risk it," he

 declared, rising from the captain's chair. "Data,

 you and Barclay do whatever's necessary to set up

 the power feed between the bio-gel paks and the

 deflectors. Contact Geordi; I want his input, too.

 See what he can do from Engineering. His control

 panels may be in better shape than ours. Ensign

 Clarze, set course for the galactic barrier."

    "Yes, sir!" the young crewman affirmed, sound-

ing eager to try anything that might liberate them

from the Calamarain. I know how you feel Riker

thought.

    He cast an anxious look at Troi, seated to his left.

"Deanna, I want you and every other telepath

aboard under medical supervision before we get

too near the barrier. Report to sickbay immedi-

ately and remind Dr. Crusher of the potential

psychic hazards of the barrier. Nurse Ogawa, you

can accompany her." He tapped his cornbadge.

"Riker to Security, escort Professor Faal and his

entire family to sickbay at once." He almost added

"red alert," then remembered that the ship had

been on red alert status ever since the Calamarain

first appeared on their sensors. Too bad we don't

have an even higher level of emergency readiness, he

thought, specifically for those occasions when we

jump from the frying pan into the fire.

    Riker's eyes met Deanna's just as she and Ogawa

entered the turbolift. For an instant, he almost

thought he could hear her voice in his mind,

through the special bond they had always shared.

Take care, her eyes entreated, then the turbolift

doors slid shut and she was gone.

    Good enough, he thought, turning his attention

back to the task before him. There had never been

any need for grand farewells between them. Each of

them already knew that should anything happen to

either one, the other would always remember what

had existed between them. They were imzadi, after

all.

    On the viewscreen, Riker caught a glimpse of

starlight as the prow of the Enterprise pierced the

outer boundaries of the Calamarain. He felt sur-

prisingly heartened by the sight of ordinary space

after long hours spent in the opaque and angry fog.

Then the front of the gigantic plasma cloud over-

took them, snatching away that peek at the stars.

"The Calamarain are pursuing us," Leyoro stated.

"Can we shake them?" he asked.

    "Not at this rate," Clarze called back from the

conn. "I'm at full impulse already."

    No surprise there, Riker observed. We already

knew they were fast. "Very well, then," he said

defiantly, determined to bolster the crew's morale.

"Let them come along with us. I want to know just

how far they're willing to take this."

    With any luck, he thought mordantly, they're not

half as crazy as we are. With all eyes glued to

viewscreen, watching for the first light of the barri-

er as the starship zoomed head on for the absolute

edge of the galaxy, Riker inconspicuously crossed

his fingers and hoped for the best. I can't believe

I'm really staking the Enterprise on some far-

fetched scheme from Reg Barclay, of all people.t This

was not one of Barclay's holodeck fantasies, this

was real life, about as real as it gets.

  And, possibly, real death as well.

"But this isn't the way to Engineering!" Lem

Faal gasped.

    "I told you, sir, you and your family have been

ordered to sickbay." The security officer, Ensign

Daniels, kept a firm grip on the scientist's arm as

he herded Faal and the children through the corri-

dors of the starship. Milo clomped down the

weightless halls in magnetic boots several sizes too

large for him, cradling Kinya in his arms. He

sensed that the large human crewman was rapidly

losing patience with the boy's father. "Please hur-

ry, sir. Commander Riker's orders."

    Milo hurried after the two adults. His father

struggled to free his arm from Daniels's grip as,

wheezing with every breath, he tried to convince

the crewman to let him go to Engineering instead.

What was he planning to do with us, Milo won-

dered bitterly, just dump us on the poor ensign or

drag us along to his shipboard laboratory? Probably

the former, he guessed. Two children would just be

in the way in Engineering, the same as they always

seemed to be in the way where their father was

concerned. Resentment seethed in the pit of his

stomach. Concern for their future, and anxiety

over their safety, only slightly diluted the bile that

bubbled and boiled within him every time he

thought of his father's gross abandonment of them.

Even now, he brooded sullenly, heg more worried

about his precious apparatus than us.

    Red-alert lights flashed at every intersection,

emphasizing the urgency of their fast-paced march

through the Enterprise. Ensign Daniels didn't

know or wouldn't explain why they had to go to

sickbay in such a rush, but obviously it was some

sort of emergency. Are they expecting us to get sick?

,,Ire the aliens winning thefight?Are we going to die?

Milo gulped loudly, imagining the worst, but tried

not to look afraid in front of his little sister. He had

to act brave now, for her sake, even though his

whole body trembled as he visualized a dozen

different ways for the cloud-monsters to kill him.

What if we have to evacuate the ship? The galactic

barrier, he knew, was a long way away from the

nearest Federation colony. Will the clouds let us

escape in peace?

    At least Kinya was weightless, too. Even still, his

arms were getting tired from holding Kinya this

whole hike and his legs weren't feeling much better.

 It still takes effort to move this much mass, he

 realized. "Are we almost there?" he asked Ensign

 Daniels. His voice only cracked a little.

     "Almost," the security officer promised. They

 rounded a corner and Milo saw a pair of double

 doors on the left side of hall. A limping crewman, a

 Tellarite from the look of him, staggered toward

 the doors from the other end of the corridor,

 clutching a wounded arm against his chest. Blood

 leaked from a cut on his forehead and scorch marks

 blackened the sleeves of his uniform. One tusk was

 chipped, and his hoof-shaped boots clicked at an

 irregular pace against the steel floor. A rush of pain

 from the injured officer hit Milo before he had a

 chance to block it. His hands stung vicariously

 from the man's burns. He felt a phantom ache

 where his tusk would have been had he been a

 Tellarite. He closed his eyes and pushed the sting-

 ing sensations away.

    Kinya, who had been sobbing and squirming as

Milo carried her, fell still at the sight of the

wounded crewman. She tightened her grip on his

shoulders. The Tellarite really looked like he'd been

through a war. Even Milo's father was quieted,

at least for the moment, by this open evidence of

the battle being waged, his indignant remarks to

Ensign Daniels trailing off in mid-insult. Seeing his

father act so subdued and reasonable, Milo had to

wonder how long it would last. Not long enough, he

guessed.

 The double doors opened automatically at the

TeUarite's approach, offering Milo his first look at

sickbay. His instant impression was one of

crowded, constant activity. Between the wounded

and those treating them, there had to be over a

dozen people in the medical facility, many of them

strapped onto biobeds whose monitor screens re-

ported on the vital signs of each patient. Despite

the packed conditions, however, everything seemed

to be under control. The activity was fast, but not

frenzied; health workers in magnetic boots shouted

queries and instructions to each other, but nobody

was panicking. Sickbay worked like a machine,

with a dozen moving pieces working in perfect

coordination with each other. Polished steel instru-

ments flew from hand to waiting hand. Ensigns

with handheld suction devices efficiently cleared

the atmosphere of floating fluids, ash, and frag-

ments of cloth. Was it always so busy, he wondered,

or only during emergencies?

    The doors stayed open for Milo and his party.

Ensign Daniels led the way and gestured for the

rest of them to follow. Remembering the pain he

had absorbed from the TeUarite, Milo clamped his

mental shields down hard before stepping inside.

    The air had a medicinal odor that he had learned

to associate with sterilization fields, and the over-

head lights were brighter than elsewhere on the

ship. They made their way carefully into a hive of

ceaseless motion that adjusted to their presence

and flowed around them as easily as a mountain

stream circumvents the rocks and other obstacles

 in its path. A levitating stretcher bumped into

 Milo's shoulders and he caught an alarming

 glimpse of a severed antennae taped to the stretcher

 next to the unconscious body of a wounded Andor-

 Jan crew member. Can they reattach that? he won-

 dered, turning around quickly so that his sister

 wouldn't see the grisly sight. He heard a frightened

 whimper from the little girl.

    The doctor attending to the Andorian, a tall man

with a bald dome, glanced down at the children

and rolled his eyes. "Marvelous," he muttered

sarcastically. "Children, no less. We'll be getting

cats and dogs next." Curiously, Milo did not detect

irritation from the man, or any other emotion; it

was almost like he wasn't really there.

    Looking around, Ensign Daniels spotted Dr.

Crusher deeper inside the facility, directing her

medical team like a general on a battlefield. "Doc-

tor!" he called out, weaving through the throng. "I

have Professor Faal and his family."

    A nurse rushed up and handed Dr. Crusher a

padd. A report on one of the patients, Milo as-

sumed. She glanced at it quickly, tapped in a few

modifications, then handed it back to the nurse,

who hurried away to see to the doctor's instruc-

tions. Dr. Crusher took a deep breath before focus-

ing on the security officer and his charges. "Good,"

she said. "I've been expecting them." She nodded

at Milo's father. "Give me just a second, Professor,

then follow me." Her sea-green eyes surveyed the

room. "Alyssa, take over triage until I get back.

Make sure the EMH looks at those radiation blis-

ters on Lieutenant Goldschlager, and tell Counsel-

or Troi to join me as soon as she finishes up with

Cadet Arwen." She took custody of Faal's arm

from the security officer. "Thank you, Ensign. If

you're not needed elsewhere, we can really use an

extra pair of hands. Contact Supply and tell them

to beam another load of zero-G plasma infusion

units directly to sickbay. We can't replicate them

fast enough."

"Yes, Doctor," Daniels promised. "First thing."

"Come with me, Professor," the doctor said,

leading them away from the main crush of the

medical emergency ward to an adjacent facility,

where they found a row of child-sized biobeds as

well as what looked like a high-tech incubator unit.

The pediatric ward, Milo realized unhappily. He

felt like a patient already and he hadn't even been

injured yet. "Here, let me help you with her," Dr.

Crusher said to him, bending over to lift Kinya

from his grateful arm, which he stretched until its

circulation returned. Kinya squalled at first, but

the doctor patted her on the back until she got used

to her new address. "That's a good girl," she cooed,

then wiped her own forehead with her free hand.

"Thank you for coming, Professor. We're in a crisis

situation here, obviously, but I want to make sure

you and your family are properly cared for."

    "Never mind that," Faal said. His face looked

flushed and feverish. The effects of weightless-

ness, Milo wondered, or something more serious?

 "What's this all about, Doctor? I demand an expla-

 nation."

     Dr. Crusher glanced down at Milo, then decided

 to choose her words carefully. "To elude the Cala-

 marain, Commander Riker has decided to take the

 Enterprise into the outer fringe of the barrier. He

 believes that our engineers have devised a way to

 provide us with some protection from the barrier,

 but it seemed wisest to place all telepaths under

 direct medical observation." She nodded toward

 the listening children. "I don't think I need to

 explain why."

    She didn't need to. Milo knew how dangerous

the galactic barrier could be, especially to anyone

with a high psionic potential; just because he

resented his father's work didn't mean he hadn't

paid attention to what his parents had hoped to

accomplish. Even humans, who were barely tele-

pathic at all by Betazoid standards, sometimes had

their brains fried by the barrier, and now the

Enterprise was taking them right into it! Milo

shuddered at the thought. The battle with the

clouds--with the Calamarain, he corrected him-

self--had to be going badly if Commander Riker

was desperate enough to fly into the barrier in-

stead. We should have never left Betazed, he

thought. We're all going to diet

    His father sounded just as upset by this turn of

events, although for different reasons. "But he

can't," he exclaimed, "not without my wormhole."

His chest heaving, he leaned against the central

incubator and groped for his hypospray. "That's

the whole point. That's why we're here."

    "Right now Commander Riker is primarily con-

cerned with the safety of the ship," another voice

intruded. Milo sensed Counselor Troi's arrival

even before he saw her framed in the entrance to

the kid's ward. She walked toward the other two

adults, taking care to step around Milo. "I can

assure you, Professor, that the commander has

considered every possibility, including your worm-

hole theory, and he truly believes that he is acting

in the best interests of everyone aboard, including

your children."

    "But he's not a scientist," Faal wheezed. The

hypospray hissed as it delivered a fresh dose of

polyadrenaline to his weakened body. "What does

he know about the barrier and the preternatural

energies that sustain it?"

    The counselor tried her best to calm him. "Com-

mander Riker may not have specialized in the hard

sciences, and certainly not to the extent you have,

but he's consulted with some of our best people,

including Commander La Forge, and he and Lieu-

tenant Commander Data and Lieutenant Barclay

feel tha--"

    "Barclay?" Faal exploded, his voice sounding

perceptibly stronger than seconds ago, and Milo

felt Troi's heart sink. He didn't know who Barclay

was, but the counselor instantly realized that she

had made a mistake in mentioning his name. "Do

you mean to tell me that my own extensive re-

 search into the barrier and its effects is being

 trumped by the scientific expertise of that clownish

 incompetent? By the Holy Rings, I've never heard

 such lunacy."

     "Please, Professor," Dr. Crusher said firmly.

 "There is no time to debate this. The decision has

 been made and I need to prepare you and your

 family before it's too late." She gestured toward

 one of the kid-sized biobeds. "What I'd like to do is

 set our cortical stimulators on a negative frequency

 in order to lower the brain activity of you and the

 children to a more or less comatose state during the

 period in which we are exposed to the psionic

 energy of the barrier. The same for you, Deanna,"

 she added. "Along with the extra shielding devised

 by... Data and Geordi... that should be enough

 to protect all of you from any telepathic side

 effects."

    She sounded very certain, but Milo could tell she

wasn't nearly as confident as she pretended to be.

Didn't she know she couldn't fool a Betazoid?

Maybe the doctor and the counselor should actu-

ally listen to his father. Despite his failings as a

parent, Milo figured his father probably knew more

about the barrier than anyone in the Federation.

    Lem Faal sure thought so. "This is so ridiculous I

can't even begin to describe how insane it is," he

insisted, returning his hypospray to the inner pock-

et of his jacket. "It was bad enough when Rikerjust

wanted to retreat from the barrier, but to go

forward into it without even attempting my experi-

ment. "

    "Perhaps you should worry less about your ex-

periment and more about your children," the doc-

tor said heatedly. Milo sensed her anger at his

father's skewed priorities. She lowered Kinya onto

one of the miniature biobeds. His sister sat side-

ways on the bed, her small legs dangling over the

edge. "According to Starfleet conventions, I don't

require your consent to protect your family during

a red alert, but I do expect your cooperation.

Deanna, please escort the professor back to the

adult ward. Have Nurse Ogawa find biobeds for

both you and Professor Faal. I'll be with you in a

few minutes, after I've prepared the children."

    Counselor Troi laid her hand on the man's arm,

but Milo's father had exhausted his patience as

well. He reached out unexpectedly and snatched

Dr. Crusher's combadge off her lab jacket. "Mr.

La Forge," he barked, speaking into the shiny

reflective badge, "this is Lem Faal. Generate the

tensor matrix at once and prepare to launch the

magneton generator. This is our last chance!"

    Geordi's voice emerged from the badge, sounding

understandably confused. "Professor Faal? What

are you doing on the comm? Has Commander

Riker authorized this?"

    "Geordi, don't listen to him!" Dr. Crusher tried

to grab the badge back from Faal, but the obsessed

scientist batted her hand away impatiently.

     "Forget about Commander Riker," he shouted,

 the badge only centimeters away from his face.

 Saliva sprayed from his lips.

     "We're so close, we have to try it. Anything else

 would be insane."

     "You're out of line, Professor," Geordi told him

 emphatically, "and I'm busy. La Forge out."

     "No!" he shouted into the badge, even though

 the connection had already been broken off. "Fire

 the torpedo, blast you. You have to fire the tor-

 pedo!"

    A hypospray hissed as Dr. Crusher applied the

instrument to his left shoulder. "Dad!" Milo cried

out as his father stiflened in surprise. His face went

slack as his eyelids drooped and he sagged back-

ward into the doctor's waiting arms.

    "Don't worry," she assured Milo. "I just pre-

scribed him an emergency tranquilizer. He'll be

fine later." With the counselor's help, she guided

his father's limp body out of the pediatric ward

into primary facility. An Octonoid crewman with

both his lower arms in slings hopped offa biobed to

make room for Faal.

    Despite the narcotic, the scientist's anxiety did

not abate entirely. Although his eyes remained

shut, his lips kept moving, driven by a powerful

sense of urgency that not even the tranquilizer

could quell. Standing next to the biobed, his ears

turned toward the unconscious man, Milo could

barely make out his father's delirious whispers.

"Help me... we're so close... you can't let them

stop me... please help me."

    Who is he talking to? Milo wondered. Me? "I

don't know how to help you, Dad. I don't know

what I can do."

    "You mustn't blame yourself for any of this,

Milo," Counselor Troi told him, placing a comfort-

ing hand upon his shoulder. He could sense her

sincerity and concern, as well as an underlying

apprehension concerning Lem Faal. "Your father

has simply been under a lot of stress lately."

    That's one way of putting it, he thought, some of

his resentment seeping through. He wondered if

the counselor, who was only half Betazoid, could

tell how angry he got at his father sometimes.

    "We should hurry," Dr. Crusher said, interrupt-

ing his moment with the counselor. She glanced at

Lem Faal's sleeping form and breathed a sigh of

relief. "I want to get the children put under first,"

she explained to Troi, "then I can look after you

and Professor Faal."

    Unsure what else to do, Milo followed the two

women back into the pediatric ward, where he

watched Dr. Crusher tend to Kinya. His little sister

squirmed and cried at first--watching her father

collapse had upset her once again--but the doctor

put her to sleep with a sedative, then stretched the

toddler out on the biobed. Retrieving a pair of

compact metallic objects from a pocket in her lab

coat, she affixed the shiny gadgets to Kinya's small

 forehead. "These are only cortical stimulators,"

 she told Milo while simultaneously checking the

 readings on the display panel mounted above the

 bed. Milo didn't know what she was looking for,

 but she appeared satisfied with the readings. "They

 won't hurt her, I promise."

     "I know," Milo said. "I believe you." In some

 ways, Dr. Crusher reminded him of his mother.

 They both always seemed to know what they were

 doing, and they didn't talk down to him. He

 appreciated that.

    "Too bad Selar transferred to the Excalibur, "she

commented to Troi as she made a final adjustment

to the devices attached to Kinya's head. "Vulcans

are supposed to be resistant to the barrier's effects,

despite their telepathic gifts. No one really knows

why, although there are any number of theories."

    Milo was too worried about everything else to

get interested in how Vulcan brains worked. At the

doctor's direction, he climbed onto the empty bed

across from Kinya's. From where he was sitting, he

could see his father sleeping in the next ward over.

To his surprise, he saw his father's face twitching,

the fingers of his hand flexing spasmodically. Lem

Faal looked like he was waking from a nightmare.

How long is that tranquilizer supposed to keep him

down anyway, Milo wondered, and shouM I alert

the doctor and the others?

    Counselor Troi must have sensed his uncertainty

because she turned and followed his gaze to where

his father rested fitfully. Her eyes widened as Faal's

entire body convulsed, then sat up suddenly. Run-

ning his hand through his disordered hair, he shot

darting glances around the sickbay like a hunted

animal searching desperately for an escape route.

His bloodshot eyes were haunted and a thin string

of saliva dribbled from his lower lip. Milo scarcely

recognized his father.

    "Beverly!" Troi called out, attracting the doctor's

attention. The counselor rushed toward the open

doorway between her and the adult ward. "Please,

Professor, you have to stay where you are. We're

getting closer to the harrier. The doctor has to

prepare you."

    At her mention of the barrier, Faal's wild eyes

filled with purpose. Gasping for breath, he lowered

himself off the bed and started to stagger across

the crowded sickbay toward the exit. Caught up

in their own emergencies, the various nurses

and patients paid little attention to the gaunt,

determined-looking Betazoid making his way

through the maze of bodies and medical equip-

ment. Milo hopped off his own bed and hurried

after Troi, watching her pursue his father. "Milo,

wait!" Dr. Crusher called to him, but he didn't

listen to her.

    Younger and healthier than the dying scientist,

Counselor Troi quickly caught up with Faal and

grabbed his elbow from behind. "You have to stay

here," she repeated urgently. "You're not safe."

     Faal spun around with a snarl, a glint of silver

 metal flashing between his fingers. Milo recognized

 the object immediately: his father's ubiquitous

 hypospray, loaded with polyadrenaline.

No, Milo thought, disbelieving. He wouldn't!

But he did. Amid all the noise and activity, he

couldn't hear the hypospray hiss when his father

pressed it against her throat, but he saw her mouth

open wide in surprise, watched her face go pale. It

happened so fast there was nothing anyone could

do to stop him. She clutched her neck instinctively,

releasing her hold on Faal, and swayed dizzily from

side to side, her gravity boots still glued to the

duranium floor. She started hyperventilating as the

polyadrenaline hit her system, huffing rapidly in

short, ragged breaths. Her eyes glazed over and the

veins in her throat throbbed at a frightening pace.

Milo guessed that her heart, her lungs, and her

entire metabolism had gone into overdrive, burn-

ing themselves out. She was swaying so wildly that

she surely would have hit the floor if not for the

absence of gravity.

    "Deanna!" Dr. Crusher shouted. To Milo's re-

lief, the doctor shoved her way past him to attend

to her friend. Taking Troi's pulse with one hand,

she immediately administered some sort of coun-

teragent via her own hypospray. The antidote took

effect almost instantly; Milo was glad to see Troi's

breathing begin to slow. She looked like she was

stabilizing now, thanks to Dr. Crusher's prompt

response. Praise the Holy Rings, Milo thought,

grateful that his father had not actually killed the

counselor.

    Lem Faal had not lingered to view the conse-

quences of his actions, or to wait for a security

officer to show up. Peering through the bustle of

sickbay, Milo spotted his father disappearing

through the double doors that led to the corridor

outside. Milo chased after him, his oversized boots

slowing him down more than he liked. Still occu-

pied with the stricken counselor, Dr. Crusher did

nothing to stop him from threading his way toward

the exit. The doors swished open in front of him

and he was free of sickbay when an unexpected

hand grabbed onto his collar, dragging him back

into the ward. "And where do you think you are

going, young man?" a voice said sternly.

    It was the bald-headed doctor, the one who

didn't register on Milo's empathic senses. He eyed

Milo dubiously, keeping a firm hold on the boy's

collar. "I'm afraid no one is released from sickbay

until they've been given a clean bill of health by a

qualified health care professional."

    "But my father!" Milo said, looking frantically at

the exit as the doors slid shut again.

    "First things first," the doctor insisted. "We'll

deal with your father's appalling breach of protocol

later. First we need to return you to the pediatric

ward."

     Milo had a vision of cortical stimulators being

 applied to his forehead and tried to free himself

 from the doctor's grip. What's going to happen to

 my dad if I'm out coM? All the doctors and nurses

 were too busy to bring his father back to sickbay

 before the ship entered the barrier. It's up to me to

 save Dad, Milo thought. "Let me go!" he yelled, but

 the bald doctor only tightened his grip. He was

 surprisingly strong.

     "No!" Dr. Crusher ordered the other physician.

 With one arm wrapped around Counselor Troi to

 steady her, the ship's chief medical officer had

 clearly taken notice of Milo's near escape. "Don't

 let him get away," she instructed her colleague.

    "I wouldn't dream of it," he replied archly,

"even if my behavioral parameters included

dreaming." Milo wasn't sure what he meant by

that, but the doctor sure wasn't letting go of him

anytime soon. He was about to give up when the

whole sickbay shook like a malfunctioning turbo-

lift. The cloud monsters, Milo guessed. They must

be trying to stop the Enterprise from going into the

barrier.

    "Crusher to Security," the doctor said, tapping

the badge on her chest. Obviously, she intended to

send Security after Milo's father. The badge emit-

ted a high-pitched whine, however, which was

clearly not what Dr. Crusher had expected. "What

the devil? There's something wrong with the comm

system."

    The overhead lights flickered and, to Milo's

surprise, so did the doctor holding his collar. He's a

rologram, the boy realized, taking advantage of the

doctor's momentary instability to break free and

run for the exit. "Stop!" the hologram cried, and

tried to seize Milo again, but his immaterial fingers

passed uselessly through the fleeing child. "You

haven't been discharged yet!" He glanced back at

Dr. Crusher, then shrugged helplessly. "Don't look

at me. I'm not responsible for unexpected power

fluctuations. This is all Engineering's fault."

    Milo barely heard the holo-doctor's excuses. As

the sickbay doors whished shut behind him, he

found himself confronted with a three-way inter-

section--and no sign of his father. He can't have

gone far, he thought, silently blaming the hologram

for slowing him down, but which way did he go?

Milo searched telepathically for his father, but

cotfid not sense his presence anywhere. He must be

blocking me out, he realized. Frustrated, he tried to

guess where his father would want to go next.

    Engineering, of course, and his equipment.

Hadn't he tried to convince Ensign Daniels to take

him to Engineering in the first place? Milo scanned

the adjacent corridors for the nearest turbolift

entrance, then raced down the left-hand hallway.

Maybe he could still catch his father before...

what? Milo had no idea what exactly he hoped to

accomplish. He only knew that he had to do

something before his father did anything terrible to

himself.

  Or someone else.

 

Chapter Six

 

GLEVI UT SoY, EMPRESS OF TKON, awoke one morn-

ing in the second year of her reign, during the latter

days of the Age of Xora, with a feeling of unac-

countable unease. There was a wrongness afoot, if

not with her, then with the empire she hoped to

rule wisely and well for many decades to come.

Rising to a sitting position upon the coach,

propped up by numerous soft cushions, each em-

broidered with the sacred emblem of the Endless

Flame, she listened carefully to the silence of the

early morning. Had any alarm or summons dis-

turbed her dreams, calling her to cope with one

emergency or another? No, the quiet of her private

chambers was quite unbroken. Nothing had roused

her except her own premonitions.

 Hooves pawing the ground.... A fragment of a

dream flashed through her memory. Curved horns

stabbing at the sky. For an instant she could almost

recall the entire dream, but then the memory

slipped away, banished from her consciousness by

the dawn of waking. What had she been dreaming

again?

    She rubbed her golden eyes with the back of her

hand, wiping away the dried residue of slumber,

stretched luxuriously, and deftly lowered her bare

feet into a pair of fur-lined slippers resting on the

floor. She could have commanded any number of

attendants to help her rise and prepare for her

duties, but she preferred to look after herself. Soon

enough today, affairs of state would demand her

attention for the remainder of her waking hours;

for now, the beginning of each day remained her

own.

    The subdued night glow of the opaque crystal

walls faded automatically as elegant chandeliers

flooded the chambers with light, highlighting the

intricate colored patterns of the antique Taguan

carpet upon the floor. The empress paid little

attention to the ornate designs of the rug, which

had been in her family since her great-grand-

father's time. Her shadow preceded her as she

stepped away from the coach, the hem of her silk

gown trailing upon the carpet. A translucent

screen, upon which was printed a copper represen-

tation of the flame emblem, descended silently

from the ceiling, sealing off the imperial bedcham-

ber from the forefront of her quarters. Her desk,

 carved from the finest D'Arsay teak, awaited her, as

 did her favorite chair.

     The outer rooms felt chilly this morning.

 "Warmer," she stated simply, "by, oh, seven and a

 half grades." Her technologists assured her that

 someday soon it would no longer be necessary to

 actually speak aloud to their homes and offices; the

 new psi-sensitive technology now being developed

 in labs throughout the empire would allow one to

 direct any and all instrumentality by thought

 alone. She frowned at the notion, not entirely sure

 she liked the idea of her palace knowing what she

 was thinking.

    Yawning, she sat down in her chair. The room

was already feeling warmer and more comfortable,

but, despite the reassuring tranquillity of her

chambers, she could not shake the ominous mood

with which she had woken. She searched her mem-

ory, trying to bring to light any disturbing dream

that might have left her spirit troubled, yet no such

nightmare came to mind. As far as she recalled, her

sleep had been soothing and unruffled until the

very moment she came awake.

    From where, then, had come this persistent sense

of impending danger? "Show me the city," she said

to the smooth, crystalline wall facing her and, like a

window opening upon the world outside the pal-

ace, a panoramic view of a sprawling metropolis

appeared on the wall, providing the empress with a

live image of Ozari-thul, capital city of the great

world Tkon, center of the Empire of the Endless

Flame.

    Resting her chin in her palm, she gazed out upon

the city, her city, seeing nothing that would ac-

count for her anxious presentiments. Ozari-thul at

dawn looked nearly as placid as her chambers, the

vast majority of the city's twelve million inhabi-

tants not yet stirring from their homes. Graceful

towers, winding like crystal corkscrews, pierced the

morning sky, while ribbons of interlocking road-

ways guided a few scattered vehicles on postnoctur-

nal errands throughout the city. The blazing sun

rose to the south, and she could not help noticing

how much larger and redder it seemed now than it

had in the not-so-long-ago days of childhood. That

so swollen a sun should actually be cooler than it

had once been struck her as paradoxical, but her

scientists assured her that was indeed the case, and

certainly the changing weather patterns of the last

few years had borne their theories out.

    Is that it? she wondered. Was her knowledge of

the geriatric sun's eventual fate coloring her per-

ceptions of the morning? That seemed unlikely.

She had known about the long-term threat posed

by their sun for years now, since even before she

assumed the throne after her mother's death. Be-

sides, the empire's finest scientists all agreed that

the expansion of the sun, as that familiar yellow

orb evolved into what the physicists called a red

goliath, would not engulf the homeworld, as well as

 the rest of the inner planets, for several centuries.

 More than time enough for the Great Endeavor to

 come to their rescue--or was it?

     She felt a stab of hunger, prompting her to ask

 for her breakfast, which instantly materialized on

 her desk: a beaker of hot tea and a plate of toasted

 biscuits, with susu jam and just a dab of imported

 Bajoran honey. Frankly, she would have liked more

 honey, but it wasn't worth the scolding she would

 receive from the court nutritionists, who fretted

 about the foreign sweeteners in the delicious amber

 spread. It was her duty, after all, to keep her mind

 and body fit, although she sometimes wondered

 what was the good of being empress if she couldn't

 even have an extra dollop of honey now and then.

    A tinted crystal disk was embedded in the top of

the teak desk. Washing down a tiny bite of biscuit

with a sip of moderately spiced tea, she gazed at the

disk and called up the most recent report on the

progress of the Great Endeavor. Dates and figures

scrolled past her eyes; as always, she was impressed

by the sheer, unprecedented scale of the project, as

well as the enormous expense. To literally move the

sun itself out of the solar system, then to replace it

with a younger star taken from an uninhabited

system light-years away... had any other species

anywhere ever attempted such a feat? Only to

preserve Tkon itself, the sacred birthplace of their

people, would she even dream of undertaking so

colossal an enterprise. Small wonder her nerves

were jittery.

    And yet... according to this report, the En-

deavor was proceeding on schedule and only

slightly over budget. If necessary, she would bank-

rupt the imperial treasury to save the planet, but

that drastic a sacrifice did not seem to be called for

at present. Work was continuing apace on the solar

transporter stations, their prospective new sun had

not yet displayed any serious irregularities, and

everything appeared to be in order. If all went

according to plan, they would be ready to attempt

the substitution within her lifetime. The Endeavor

was no more risky today than it had been the day

before, so why did she feel so perturbed?

    With a word or two, she cleared the crystal

viewing disk and called for her first minister. The

image of an older man, seen from the waist up,

appeared at once within the crystal. From the look

of him, Rhosan arOx had already been at work for

an hour or so. A ceremonial cloak of office was

draped over his shoulders and his graying hair was

neatly groomed. His cheeks had a healthy violet

hue, which reassured her more than she wanted to

admit. He looks like he can manage affairs for

many more years, the empress thought, just as he

did for Mother. "Good morning, Most Elevated,"

he said. "How can I help you?"

    "Nothing too urgent," she replied, reluctant to

burden him with her indistinct worries. "I was

merely interested in... well, the state of the em-

pire."

  The vertical slits of his pupils widened their

golden irises. "If I may take the liberty of asking, is

something troubling you, Most Elevated?"

    He's still as perceptive as he ever was, she

thought. "It is most likely nothing," she assured

him. "I feel... fretful... this morning, for no

apparent reason. The foolish fancies of an inexperi-

enced empress, most likely."

    "I doubt that," he said promptly, "but I will be

happy to allay your cares by informing you what I

know." His gaze dropped to the surface of his own

desk; over the last several months, he had taken

over an increasingly larger share of her executive

duties, freeing her to concentrate on the Great

Endeavor. "Let's see. Labor negotiations with the

Diffractors' Guild are dragging on, the United Sons

and Daughters of Bastu are protesting the latest

interplanetary tariffs, the Organians turned back

our envoy again, and some fool politician on one of

the outer worlds--Rzom, I believe--is refusing to

pay his taxes, claiming the Great Endeavor is,

quote, 'a sham and a hoax,' end quote, making him

redundant as well as a damn idiot." Rhosan looked

up from his data display. "Just the usual head-

aches, in other words. Nothing that should cause

you excess concern."

    "I see," the empress said, her tea and biscuits

getting cold. "Thank you for your concise summa-

ry of the issues at hand. I don't believe any of the

matters you mentioned could be the source of my

thus far baseless apprehensions. Please forgive me

for disturbing your work with such a nebulous

complaint."

    "It was no trouble," he insisted. "I hope I was

able to put your mind to rest."

    "Perhaps," she said diplomatically. "In any

event, you may return to your numerous other

responsibilities." Governing an empire of seven

trillion inhabitants was no small task, as she well

knew. "I shall see you later today, at the Fathoming

Ceremony."

    "Until then," the first minister acknowledged,

dipping his head as she closed the connection. The

crystal disk went blank. If only I could dismiss my

qualms so easily, she mused. None of the routine

difficulties Rhosan had alluded to justified the

sense of dread that cast an inauspicious cloud over

each passing moment. She raised her teacup to her

lips, hoping the warmth of the tea would dispel the

chill from her soul, but knowing in her heart that

there was no easy balm for the doubts and fears

that afflicted her.

    A design etched onto both cup and plate caught

her eye. The Endless Flame, ancient symbol of the

empire since time immemorial. In olden days, she

recalled, now lost in the haze of myth and legend,

her primal ancestors were said to have been proph-

ets, mystics, and seers. Their visions, according to

archaic lore, had proven instrumental in the found-

ing of the dynasty. Those distant days were long

departed now, and subsequent rulers had required

no such oracular prowess to guide the empire, but

she couldn't help wondering, amid the miraculous

technology of their modem age, if the blood of

seers still flowed through her veins. Would her

eldest forebears have recognized this seemingly

inexplicable anxiety, this puzzling tremor in her

psyche and spirit?

    A single shard of memory lodged in her mind,

less than a heartbeat in duration. A barely recalled

sliver of a dream about... hooves?

    Something terrible was coming, of that she was

convinced.

 

    "Comfortable, confident, trapped by tradition,

enamored of their own hallowed history, and

drunk with delusions of destiny," 0 sneered at the

mighty Tkon Empire. "They're perfect, Q! I

couldn't have chosen any better."

    Five attentive entities, plus two more whose

presence was unknown to the others, watched the

planet Tkon spin beneath them, no larger than a

toy globe compared to the scale on which Q and the

others currently manifested themselves. From their

lofty vantage point, several million kilometers

above the world where the young empress dwelt,

they could see a swarm of satellites, artificial and

otherwise, orbiting the central planet. Tkon was the

fourth planet in its system, and its influence spread

outward in an expanding sphere of imperial he-

gemony that encompassed colonies on both the

inner and outer worlds of its own solar system as

well as distant outposts lit by the glow of alien

stars. Tkon's defenses, based on those same satel-

lites, colonies, and outposts, were formidable

enough to discourage aggression from the barbari-

an races who lurked beyond the outermost reaches

of the empire. 0 and his cohorts, on the other hand,

couldn't have cared less about Tkon's vast military

resources.

    "Actually," the young Q said, "I've always con-

sidered the Tkon a civilizing factor in this region of

the galaxy." He was starting to regret suggesting the

Tkon Empire in the first place. What kind of

testing did 0 have in mind? Nothing too severe, he

hoped. "Their accomplishments in the arts and

sciences, although aboriginal by our standards,

naturally, are laudable enough on their own terms.

I'm particularly fond of the satirical profile-poems

of the late Cimi erare"

    "Q, Q, Q," 0 interrupted, shaking his head.

"You're missing the point. It's these creatures'

primitive progress that makes them the ideal test

subjects for our experiments. Where's the sport in

testing some backward species that can barely split

an atom, let alone synthesize antimatter? That

would be a total waste of our time and abilities."

He scowled at the thought before turning his mind

toward brighter prospects. "These Tkon, on the

other hand, are just perfect. Not too primitive, not

too powerful. They're hovering at the cusp of true

greatness, waiting for someone like us to come

along to push them to next level... if they're

able."

    "Precisely," Gorgan agreed. He licked his lips in

anticipation. "I can already see some intriguing

possibilities for them."

      "In them," Q corrected, assuming the other was

referring to the Tkon's potential as a species.

  Gorgan shrugged. "As you prefer."

    "They have grown overproud and must be hum-

bled," The One pronounced. "They must drink

bitter waters before they face My Judgment."

    (*) merely flashed through pulsating shades of

crimson, awaiting O's command. A Tkon starship,

en route to the eleventh planet in the home system

with a crew complement of one thousand two

hundred and five, approached the gathered immor-

tals. Although traveling over twenty times the

speed of light, it seemed to Q to be crawling toward

them, and not much larger than an Organian

dovebeetle. Despite, or perhaps because of, the

difference in scale between the gleaming vessel and

the immaterial onlookers, the ship remained un-

aware of Q and the others even as it came within

their proximity. It glided between Q and 0, who

nonchalantly reached out and swatted the minia-

ture spacecraft away, sending it tumbling through

space and into the hard red radiance of (*).

    Moments later, as Q reckoned time, (*)'s influ-

ence caused a bloody mutiny to erupt aboard the

ship, leading ultimately to a helix drive explosion

that blossomed into a firefly flash of blue-green

before dimming into nothingness. (*) glowed a

little brighter afterward, savoring its snack.

 

    It had happened so quickly, from this celestial

point of reference, that Picard could scarcely keep

up with all that was happening, let alone grasp its

meaning. "That ship," he murmured. "All those

lives..."

    "A matter of no importance," Q insisted, "a tiny

teardrop of tragedy before the deluge. You mustn't

let yourself be distracted by such marginalia. The

fate of an empire, and more, is at stake."

    Picard nodded grimly, unable to speak. He knew

full well what was coming, and Q was right: The

destruction of a single starship was next to nothing

compared to the apocalypse ahead.

 

"You have to admit," 0 said to the young Q, the

tiny starship already forgotten, "the Tkon still have

a long way to go before they're remotely compara-

ble to us, or even that fetid fog we first ran into."

"I don't know," Q responded, the bright tiny

spark that had been a spacecraft still imprinted on

his metaphysical retinas. Intellectually, he liked the

idea of helping lesser life-forms evolve; it certain-

ly beat the unending boredom the Continuum

provided in such dispiriting quantities. Primitive

species had often proved more unpredictable, and

therefore more entertaining, than his fellow Q...

with the possible exception of Q herself. On the

other hand, when it came to actually visiting trials

and tribulations on a harmless little species like the

Tkon, who had worked so hard to achieve their

own modest triumphs... well, he found it seemed

vaguely unsporting. "They seem to be doing fairly

well on their own," he observed.

    "Fairly well?" 0 echoed. He laughed so loud that

Q found himself blushing without really knowing

why. "They're nowhere close to transcending

fourth-dimensional existence, let alone achieving

true cosmic consciousness. Why, they still require

a massive infrastructure and social hierarchy just

to satisfy their crude physical needs." He rolled his

eyes and raised his hands in amazement. "You

can't let yourself get sentimental about your sub-

jects, no matter how cute and comical they are.

Face the facts, Q. At this rate, it will take them a

couple of eternities to catch up with us, if they even

last that long, which I sincerely doubt. They've

gotten smug, complacent, convinced that they're

sitting at the top of the evolutionary ladder. They

have no more incentive to evolve further, which

means they're just short of total stagnation. They

need to be reminded that there are bigger forces in

the universe, sublime mysteries they haven't even

begun to unravel."

    "So be it," The One seconded, nodding His

bearded head ponderously. His golden armor

clanked as He crossed His arms atop His chest, the

metallic ringing resounding across five dimension-

al planes and creating unaccountable subspace

vibrations that caused technicians to scratch their

heads in confusion throughout the entire empire.

"Let it be written."

    "If testing these beings is indeed on the agenda,"

Gorgan pointed out, "we should do so swiftly." He

gestured toward the flaming thermonuclear globe

at the center of the Tkon's solar system. "That old

sun is clearly on its last legs."

    Q glanced at the orb in question, seeing at once

that Gorgan was correct. The sun of Tkon, a

standard yellow star of no particular distinction

aside from its usefulness to the Tkon, had almost

depleted its store of hydrogen atoms. Soon enough,

the helium in its core would begin fusing into

carbon, eventually causing the star to swell into a

bloated red caricature of its former self, and, from

the look of things, swallow up all of the inner

planets, including Tkon. "Seems to me," he sug-

gested, "that the Tkon have challenges enough

without us adding to their difficulties."

    "Which is why this is exactly the right time to

test them," 0 insisted, looming over the endan-

gered world like a constellation. "Now is the defin-

ing moment of their existence. Can they remain

focused on the big picture despite their trivial

everyday concerns, not to mention whatever ingen-

ious obstacles we place before them? Will they

perish with their star, abandon their homes for

distant shores, or achieve the impossible in the face

of impediments both natural and supernatural?"

He rubbed his palms together eagerly. "It should be

a fascinating experiment?'

    "Er, what kind of impediments did you have in

mind?" Q found himself looking backward over

his shoulder, half expecting to find the entire

Continuum looking on in disapproval. If they had

any idea what 0 has in mind....t To his surprise,

he discovered that the danger of incurring his

peers' censure only made O's plans all the more

irresistible. There was an undeniable, if vaguely

illicit, thrill in defying propriety this way. If only

there was some way to scandalize the Q and the

others without inconveniencing the Tkon too

much.

    "Why, whatever we feel like," 0 stated readily. Q

envied his reckless, carefree attitude. "You don't

want to plan these things too much beforehand.

You need to leave yourself room to improvise, to

invent and elaborate. It's as much an art as a

science." He gestured toward the solar system at

their feet. "Go ahead," he urged Q. "It was your

idea. It's only fitting you take the first shot. Indulge

yourself. Employ that extraordinary imagination

of yours. Give their tiny, terrestrial, time-bound

minds something to really think about."

    Q gathered his power together, feeling the cre-

ative energies crackle in his hands. This is it, he

thought. This is my chance. A peculiar sense of...

suspense? tension?... percolated within him. It

was a strange, but not altogether unpleasant sensa-

tion. After all this time, after countless aeons spent

waiting for the opportunity to show what he could

do, what if he couldn't think of anything? What if

he made a mistake or, worse yet, committed some

ghastly clich6 that just made 0 and the rest think

less of him? He felt the pressure of the others'

expectant gaze, savored an unprecedented fear of

failure, then took a deep if figurative breath, ab-

sorbing inspiration from the ether. "Suppose," he

said tentatively, not quite committing himself, "I

miraculously extended the life span of their sun by

another four billion years?" Easy enough, he

thought; all that was required was a fresh infusion

of elemental hydrogen into the star's core. "That

would come as a real stunner to them, wouldn't it?

What do you think they will do with all that extra

time? How will their society and institutions react?

It should make for an informative experiment,

don't you think?"

    0 sighed and rubbed his brow wearily. Gorgan

and The One shook their heads and stepped back-

ward, placing a bit more distance between them

and Q, who could tell at once that his suggestion

had not been well received. Hey, don't blame me,

he thought indignantly. It was my first try, after all.

    "You're missing the point," 0 explained. "That's

no test; that's a gift." He spit out the word as if it

left a bad taste in his mouth. "Four billion extra

years? What's that going to teach them--or us, for

that matter? Progress, even survival itself, must be

earned. Challenges are to be overcome. Benevo-

lence is for babies."

    Q's ears burned. Was 0 calling him a baby? Why,

he was almost seven billion years old! "Can't the

unexpected come in positive forms as well as

negative?" he argued. "Isn't a species' reaction to

miraculous good fortune as significant, as educa-

tional and edifying, as the way they cope with

adversity?"

    "On some abstract, intellectual level perhaps," 0

said grudgingly, "but take it from me, Q, it's a lot

more boring, for the tested and tester alike. What

would you rather do, watch the Tkon cope with the

ultimate issues of life or death, or simply feed them

a few cosmological crumbs now and then, watching

from afar as they scurry around in gratitude?" He

yawned theatrically. "Frankly, I have better things

to do than watch you dote on an undeserving

warren of underdeveloped, overpopulated vermin.

Where's the sport in that?" He paced back and

forth across the sector, his footsteps creating deep

impressions in the fabric of space-time that would

someday be charted by the first Verathan explorers,

five hundred thousand years later. "Come on, Q.

Surely you can do better than that. What's it going

to be?"

    "I don't know," Q blurted, feeling both embar-

rassed and resentful. "I'm not sure." Why was 0

making this so hard? It's not fair, he thought. The

Continuum is forever badgering me about going too

far,' now 0 is unhappy because I won't go far enough.

He wanted to do something, but not necessarily to

anyone.

    "Listen to me, Q," 0 entreated. "This is what

you've always wanted, a chance to use your innate

abilities the way they were always meant to be

used. Don't censor yourself before you even begin.

Don't hold back. Show the Tkon, and the rest of

the multiverse, what you're really made of. Put the

fear of Q into them!"

    Well, not fear exactly, Q thought. Still, 0 had a

point. Realistically, there was no way to make an

impact on the universe without affecting the Tkon

or some species like them. He couldn't balk now,

not if he was really serious about joining 0 in his

campaign. Despite his qualms, he felt a tingle of

excitement, a sneaky thrill that was only height-

ened by the sense that he was getting away with

something he shouldn't. "All right," he declared,

"let's start with something silly and see where we

go from there."

    Without warning, thousands upon thousands of

plump, juicy red yorelies, a Tkon fruit not unlike a

tomato, poured from the sky above the great city of

Ozari-thul. The succulent deluge pelted the streets

and rooftops of the capital, leaving a wet, pulpy

mess wherever the falling fruits came to rest. The

fruits exploded upon impact with masonry or flesh,

spraying everyone and everything with sloppy red

debris. The people of the city, the great and the

lowly alike, ran for shelter, then stared in awe and

amazement at the inexplicable phenomenon. Slit-

ted golden eyes blinked in disbelief while psionic

announcements urged the citizens to remain calm.

"Not bad," 0 pronounced. "A bit adolescent, but

okay for a start."

    Q was delighted by the results of his opening

move. He laughed out loud as a ceremonial parade

down the heart of the city was reduced to pande-

monium by the unnatural downpour, sending both

marchers and onlookers scrambling, already drip-

ping with raw seed and juice, slipping and sliding

in the gory remains of thousands of skydiving

fruits. The high priestess of the Temple of Ozari,

her immaculate white robes and headdress splat-

tered with pulp, tried futilely to finish the Ritual of

Ascension until an overripe vovelle cut her off in

the midprayer. But not everyone found the bizarre

fruitfall an ordeal or an offense; small children,

exhilarated by the marvelously messy miracle, ran

squealing through the streets, scooping up hand-

fuls of pulverized fruit innards to hurl at each

other, giggling deliriously as the gooey redness ran

through their hair and down their faces.

    Q was just as gratified and amused. All that

tremendous chaos, and all because of him! Why-

ever had he waited so long to play this game? One

whimsical notion, and he had affected the lives of

millions, maybe even billions, of other beings. This

was a day that neither he nor the Tkon Empire

would ever forget, and he was just getting warmed

up. Why, he could do anything now, anything at all.

A million outrageous possibilities popped into his

mind. He could bring the colorful gods and mon-

sters of Tkon mythology to life, or make their

entire history flow backward. He could imbue an

ordinary Tkon with a fraction of Q-power and see

what happened next, or turn himself into a Tkon

for a time. He could make them speak exclusively

in limericks or sign language or Ionian pentameter.

He might even change the value of pi throughout

the entire empire or lower the speed of light;

just imagine the divine confusion and merriment

that would ensue! The possibilities were as infi-

nite as his imagination. He could hardly wait to get

started.

    But suppose he got carried away? The thought

materialized within his mind as unexpectedly as

the fruits bombarding Ozari-thul, surfacing from

some surprising core of responsibility at the locus

of being. The possibilities at hand were almost too

unlimited. For the first time, Q was frightened by

his own omnipotence.

    The rain of yorelies halted abruptly, leaving a

puzzled population to gaze quizzically at the now-

empty sky. They peeked out nervously from beneath

archways and covered pavilions, half expecting the

fruits to return in greater numbers, perhaps ac-

companied by icemelons and susu as well. Auto-

mated sanitation systems began clearing away the

slippery debris. Awe and wonder gave way to

feverish speculation and debate as news of the

bizarre incident immediately spread to every cor-

ner of the empire. Despite a full imperial investiga-

tion, however, including the subatomic and elec-

tromagnetic scrutiny of over five thousand barrels

of vovelle pulp, plus countless hours of careful

analysis and ontological theorizing, no satisfactory

explanation was ever provided, nor did the em-

press and her people come close to guessing the

truthmuntil much later.

    "What's the matter, Q?" 0 asked. "Why have you

stopped?" He must have known from the look on

Q's face that the young godling was not merely

gearing up for some newer and greater escapade.

"Is there a problem?"

    "It's nothing," Q said, unable to meet the other's

eyes; he didn't want to admit to any second

thoughts. What kind of rebel was he if he got

squeamish about a mere harmless jest? They'd

think he was a coward, afraid of upsetting the

Continuum. "I was simply concerned about the

long-term ecological impact of all those plummet-

ing succulents." The excuse sounded feeble even to

his own ears. "It's just that I want to pace myself,

not use up all my creativity on the first evolving

life-form that catches my eye."

    "But you were only getting warmed up," 0 told

him. "That was nothing but a schoolboy prank.

Not that I don't like a good joke as much the next

all-powerful life-form, but don't you want to try

something, well, more serious?"

    "Maybe later," Q said. It was tempting to play

with the Tkon again, try out some of his new ideas,

but he didn't want to be pushed into anything he

was uncomfortable with by simple peer pressure

alone. If I wanted to just go along with the crowd, I

could have stuck with the Continuum. I'm only

going to do what I want to do--just as soon as I

figure out what that is.

    "I see," 0 answered. He looked disappointed in

Q, but refrained from any further criticism. "Well,

why don't you sit this one out while Gorgan and

the others show you how it's done." He nodded at

his companions, who began to descend and dis-

perse to the far-flung borders of the Tkon Empire,

their very substance shrinking and growing more

compact as they accommodated themselves to the

mortal plane of their respective targets. Soon they

appeared to be no larger than the individual deni-

zens of the worlds they had each selected, but

appearances, in this case, were extremely deceiv-

ing. "They'll just soften them up for us," 0 told Q.

"You and I, maybe we can deliver the coup de grace

later on, after our friends have had their fun." He

strolled over to Q and rested his celestial frame

upon an invisible chair. "You'll like that, Q. The

final test. The exam to end all exams. That's what

makes it all worthwhile, you'll see."

    "Really?" Q asked, too keyed up to sit. He

watched the receding forms of Gorgan, (*), and

The One with mixed emotions. Part of him, the

part that had thoroughly enjoyed raining overripe

fruit upon the palaces of Ozari-thul, wished he was

going with them. Another part, from which his

trepidations had emerged, waited nervously to see

what sort of stunts Q's old acquaintances were

intent on. "What kind of final test?" he asked.

    "Later," 0 promised. "For now, just sit back and

enjoy the show."

    I'll try, Q thought, settling back into a comfort-

able curvature of space-time, adjusting the gravity

until it fit just right and resting his head against a

patch of condensed dark matter. He had to admit,

in spite of his occasional reservations, there was

something exceptionally stimulating about not

knowing what was going to happen next.

 

Chapter Seven

 

GALACTIC BARRIER, HERE WE COME, Riker thought as

the Enterprise came within sight of the perilous

wall of energy. He wasn't looking forward to justi-

fying this decision to Captain Picard, in the un-

likely event that they ever met again. Two empty

chairs flanked the captain's seat; with Picard away

and Deanna off in sickbay, the command area felt

even lonelier than usual.

    "There it is," Ensign Clarze called out unneces-

sarily. Even through the stormy chaos of the Cala-

marain, the luminous presence of the barrier could

be perceived, shining through the temperamental

clouds like a searchlight through the mist and

throwing a reddish purple radiance over the scene

upon the viewer. Let's hope that it's not luring us on

to our destruction, Riker thought. At maximum

 impulse, they would be within the barrier in a

 matter of moments.

    "Steady as she goes, Mr. Clarze," he instructed.

A loose isolinear chip, its casing charred by the

explosion that had liberated it from a broken

control panel, drifted between Riker and the view-

screen, pointedly reminding him that the gravity

had gone the way of most of their shields. Thank

heaven we still have life-support, he thought, after

the beating we've taken. He suspected that the old

Enterprise-D, as durable as she was, would have

already succumbed to the Calamarain's assault. We

upgraded just in time.

    "Shields at eight percent," Leyoro reported.

Small wonder that the ship felt like it was shaking

itself apart. The Calamarain, perhaps becoming

aware of Riker's desperate strategy, threw them-

selves against the hull and what remained of the

deflectors with the same relentless ferocity they

had displayed for hours now. Don't they ever get

tired, he thought, or is that just something we solids

have to put up with?

    "Data. Barclay. Where's that extra energy?" He

smacked his fist against the arm of the chair. "We

need those shields."

    "Scanning for it," Barclay said from the aft

engineering station. Now that the pressure was on,

the nervous crewman seemed to find a hidden

reserve of professionalism, or maybe he was just

too busy to be frightened. This had better work,

Riker thought, drawing comfort from the fact that

Geordi had looked over Barclay's findings and

seconded Data's technical evaluation of the plan.

That's as much as I can ask for, given our lousy

situation. "Yes," Barclay reported, "I think I'm

reading something now. The bio-gel pales are being

energized by the proximity of the barrier. I'm

picking up definite traces of psionic particles."

    Lightning crashed across the prow of the saucer

section, and sparks spewed from the engineering

station, the electrical spray gushing toward the

ceiling instead of raining upon the floor as they

would have under ordinary gravitational condi-

tions. It looked like a geyser of fire. Barclay had no

choice but to step back from the sparking console

while he waited for the emergency circuits to shut

down the geyser. "Commander," he said, cha-

grined, "I can't monitor the bio-gel paks anymore."

    Terrific, Riker thought bitterly. "Data, take over

from your station. Divert whatever energy we've

absorbed to the shields immediately." It will have

to be enough.

    "Yes, Commander," Data acknowledged, his

synthetic fingers flying over the control panel faster

than any human eye could follow. "Initiating ener-

gy transfer now."

    Here goes nothing, Riker thought. Everything

depended on Barclay's wild scheme.

    "Shields back up to seventy percent," Leyoro

reported in surprise; Riker didn't think she was the

sort to believe in miracles. "The readings are very

peculiar. These aren't like any deflectors I know,

but they're holding."

    And just in time, Riker thought as the ship

plunged into the barrier. He braced for the impact,

wondering briefly if it was even possible for the

ship to be knocked about more than the Calama-

rain had done. The light radiating from the viewer

grew brighter and for an instant he believed he saw

the Calamarain flash strangely, their vibrant colors

reversed like a photographic negative. Then the

whole screen whited out, overloaded by the incred-

ible luminosity of the barrier. The hum of the

Calamarain, and the thunder of their aggression,

vanished abruptly, replaced by a sudden silence

that was almost as unnerving. It was like going

from a battlefield to a morgue in a single breath,

and creepy as could be.

    "Commander," Leyoro exulted, "the Calama-

rain have withdrawn. They can't stand the barri-

er!" She let out a high-pitched whoop that Riker

assumed was some sort of Angosian victory cry. A

breach of bridge protocol, but forgivable under the

circumstances. He felt like cheering himself, de-

spite the eerie quiet.

    But, having shed the Calamarain at last, could

they survive the barrier? He hoped that their

adversaries, in choosing the better part of valor,

had not proven wiser than the Enterprise. "Mr.

Clarze," he commanded, "come to a full stop." He

didn't want to go any deeper into the barrier than

they had to, let alone face whatever dangers might

be waiting on the other side, with the ship in the

shape that it was. "Leyoro, how are our new and

improved shields holding up?"

    The deathly hush of the barrier had already

spread to the ship; the lights of the bridge dimmed,

then went out entirely, leaving only the red emer-

gency lights and the glow from the surviving con-

soles to illuminate the stations around him. The

familiar buzz of the bridge faded as lighted control

panels flickered before falling dead. The forward

viewer was useless, the screen blank. They were

flying blind, more or less.

    "Sufficiently, I think," Leyoro allowed. "The

readings are difficult to interpret; the psychic ener-

gy bombarding the ship is the same energy that is

maintaining our shields, which makes them hard to

distinguish from each other."

    "How much longer can we stay here?" he asked,

cutting straight to the crux of the matter. He felt a

dull ache beneath his forehead, and recalled that

Kirk had lost close to a dozen crew members on his

trip through the barrier, their brains burned out by

some sort of telepathic shock. He suddenly won-

dered if his decade-long psychic bond with Deanna

could have left him peculiarly vulnerable to the

telepathic danger of the psychic energy now sur-

rounding the ship. Lord only knows what its doing

to my frontal lobes, he thought, even through our

shields.

 Leyoro shook her head, unable to answer his

question. Her glee over eluding the Calamarain

had given way to concern over their present status.

He saw her grimace in pain, then massage her

forehead with her fingers. Never mind my brain, he

thought, what about Leyoro's? It had not occurred

to him before that her modified nervous system,

permanently altered by the Angosians to increase

her combat readiness, might put her at risk as well.

    He looked to Barclay and Data instead. "How

long?" he asked again, wondering if the real ques-

tion wasn't how long they could stay within the

barrier, but how long they dared to.

    "It is impossible to state with certainty," the

android informed him. "As long as the bio-gel paks

continue to draw psychic power from the barrier,

we should be safe, but we must allow for the

possibility that these unusual energies, which the

bio-gel paks were never designed to accommodate,

may burn out the paks at any moment, in which

case our situation would become significantly more

hazardous."

    "Urn, what he said," Barclay confirmed, twitch-

ing nervously. Paradoxically, his self-conscious

mannerisms had returned as soon as the immedi-

ate danger passed. He works best under pressure,

Riker guessed. The less time he has to fret about

things, the better he copes.

    "Understood," he said. "Good work, both of

you. Contact Commander La Forge and tell him to

start repairing the damage done by the Calama-

rain. Top priority on the shields; with any luck, we

can get our conventional deflectors up and running

before these new bio-gel paks burn themselves

out."

    "What about the gravity, sir?" Barclay asked.

Despite the anti-nausea treatment from Nurse

Ogawa, he still looked a little green around the

gills. Simple spacesickness, or was Barclay's cere-

brum also taking a beating from the barrier? Riker

recalled that the engineer's brain had been artifi-

cially enhanced once before, when the Cytherians

temporarily increased his intelligence. Barclay's

IQ had returned to normal eventually, but it was

conceivable that he could have picked up a little

heightened telepathic sensitivity in the process.

Data may be the only crew member aboard who is

entirely immune to the effect of the barrier, Riker

realized.

    Riker shook his head in response to Barclay's

query. "Shields first, then the warp drive. We'll just

have to put up with weightlessness a little longer."

To keep up morale, he allowed himself an amused

grin. "Think of it as a vacation from gravity."

    "Now that we're free of the Calamarain's damp-

ing influence," Leyoro pointed out, "the warp

engines may be operative again."

    That~ right, Riker thought, immediately tapping

his cornbadge. "Geordi, we're inside the outer

fringes of the barrier, but the Calamarain have

retreated. What's the status of the warp engines?"

    "Not good, Commander," Geordi's voice stated,

exerting its own damping influence on Riker's

hopes. "I don't know if it was the Calamarain or

the barrier or both, but the warp nacelles have

taken an awful lot of damage. It's going to take

several hours to fix them."

    Blast, Riker thought, not too surprised. As he

recalled, the barrier had knocked out Kirk's warp

engines, too, the first time he dared the barrier.

Plus, when you considered all the pounding they

had received from the Calamarain's thunderbolts,

and with minimal shields there at the end, he

figured he should be thankful that at least the

corem system was working. "Go to it, Mr. La

Forge. Riker out."

    "It may be just as well, Commander," Data

commented. "It is impossible to predict the conse-

quences of going to warp within the barrier itself. I

would be highly reluctant to attempt such an

experiment without further analysis of the un-

known energies that comprise the barrier."

    Except that that may be a risk we have to take,

Riker thought, especially if the Calamarain are

waiting for us right outside the barrier. "What

about those angry clouds we just got rid of?." he

asked Leyoro. It was possible that the Calamarain,

assuming the Enterprise destroyed by the barrier,

may have left for greener pastures. "Any sign

they're still hanging around out there?"

    "I don't know, sir," Leyoro said unhappily; it

was obvious that the security chief did not like

having to keep disappointing her commander. Just

as obviously, her head was still bothering her. She

rubbed her right temple mechanically, while a

muscle beside her left eye twitched every few

seconds. "The barrier is so intense its overwhelm-

ing our sensors. They can't detect anything past it."

    So we're blind, deaf, and numb, Riker concluded.

The big question then was what was more danger-

ous, staying inside the barrier or facing the Cala-

marain? We already know we can't beat the

Calamarain as is, he thought, so our best bet is to

stay put until Geordi can get the warp drive working

again, then try to make a quick escape. He surveyed

the bridge, inspecting the faces of his crew, and was

glad to see that all of them, including Barclay,

seemed fit enough for action. He considered send-

ing Leyoro to sickbay for a checkup, but there was a

host of people aboard, all of them in danger', he

couldn't afford to start relieving oflScers just be-

cause they might have a suspicious headache. His

own head was throbbing now, but none of his

people looked like they were ready to keel over.

 Yet.

 

 

 

 

Chapter Eight

 

DURING THE FIFTH YEAR OF THE REIGN of the em-

press, on an unusually chilly summer night in the

largest city on Rzom, the eleventh planet in the

primary solar system of the Tkon Empire, a young

man stood on the wide crystal steps leading to the

front entrance of the imperial governor's mansion

and exhorted the crowd that had gathered in the

spacious and well-lit plaza to hear him speak. A

life-sized statue of the empress, carved from the

purest Rzom marble and posed heroically atop an

elegant pedestal at the center of the plaza, looked

on in silence.

    "Why," he asked the onlookers rhetorically,

"should we pay exorbitant taxes, wasting the re-

sources of a lifetime, just to preserve an over-

crowded old world millions of miles from here,

whose time has come?"

    About a third of the crowd, most the same age as

the speaker, cheered his words enthusiastically,

while others muttered among themselves or cast

angry yellow stares at the youth upon the steps.

A contingent of five safeties, clad in matching

turquoise uniforms, flanked the crowd, watching

carefully for the early signifiers of a brewing distur-

bance. The faces of the safeties were fixed and

expressionless, displaying no response to the young

man's fervent oratory. Pacification rings waited

patiently on the fingers of each safety's hand,

linked to sophisticated neutralization equipment

embedded in the very walls and pavement of the

city. So far, there had been no cause to employ the

rings, but the safeties remained alert and ready.

Nervous faces, perhaps even the governor's, peered

through the curtained windows of the palace, view-

ing the drama from behind the safety of reinforced

crystal walls.

    "That world is our birthplace," a woman shouted

indignantly from the forefront of the crowd. From

the looks of her, she was a governmental function-

ary of approximately the sixth echelon, whose

reddish hair was already turning silver. A disk-

shaped emblem melded to the collar of her insulated

winter mantle proclaimed that she had voluntarily

donated more than her allotted share to the Great

Endeavor.

 

 

    The young man's partisans among the crowd,

students mostly, greeted the woman's passionate

outburst with jeers and laughter. Emboldened by

their support, the speaker on the steps hooted as

well. "I wasn't born there and neither were you,"

he shot back, winning another round of cheers

from his contemporaries. Despite the chill of the

evening, on a world little known for its warmth, his

vermilion cloak was open to the wind and flapping

above his shoulder as he spoke. His ebony locks

were knotted in the latest style. "I'm proud to say

that I was born here on Rzommand to Hades with

decrepit Tkon!"

    Many of the older spectators clucked disapprov-

ingly and shook their heads. "You should be

ashamed of yourself," the aging functionary said.

"You don't deserve the blessings of the empire!"

    One crystal step above and behind the youthful

firebrand, unobserved by either his supporters or

detractors, nor by the watchful eyes of the vigilant

safeties, Gorgan watched with pleasure as the pub-

lic debate grew more heated. It ~ always so easy,

he thought, pitting the young against the old. This

new plane is no different than any other realm.

    The graying woman's admonition was seconded

by others in the audience. This time those rallying

around her matched the volume of the young

people's catcalls and derisive glee. "That's right,"

another man yelled. He looked like an archivist or

invested myth reader. "Go live among the barbari-

ans if that's what you want. Real Tkon know that

the homeworld is worth any sacrifice."

    The open show of opposition seemed to rattle

the leader of the dissidents, who stepped backward

involuntarily, passing effortlessly through the im-

material form of Gorgan, who casually eased to

one side for a bit more personal space. The proud

young Rzom faltered, momentarily at a loss for

words, but Gorgan came to his rescue, whispering

into the youth's ear in a voice only his unconscious

mind could hear.

    "Blessings? What blessings?" the speaker de-

manded, partoting the words that flowed so easily

from Gorgan's lips. "Over fifteen percent of the

empire's adult laborers are devoted to the em-

press's misguided Endeavor, and over twenty-

seven percent of the entire imperial budget! All to

keep the inner planets from meeting their natural

fate. Can you imagine what else could have been

done with all that time and treasure, the advances

we could have achieved in art, science, medicine,

exploration, and social betterment? The finest

minds of a generation are being squandered on a

grandiose exercise in sentimentality and nostal-

gia." His voice grew bolder and more confident as

Gorgan fed him subliminal cues. "Our ancestors

had the courage to physically leave Tkon genera-

tions ago; we should have the courage to let go of it

spiritually at long last. Let's work together to

enhance the future, not preserve the past!"

    "Hear, hear!" cried a young woman, barely past

adolescence, her emerald tresses knotted so tightly

that not a single strand blew freely in the wind.

"Tell them, Jenole!"

    The man beside her, wearing the indigo crest of a

licensed commerce artist, gave her a contemptuous

sneer. "Spoiled whelp," he muttered, loud enough

for her to hear. Throughout the assembled throng,

individuals eyed their neighbors skeptically and

began clustering into hostile pockets of two or

more, placing physical as well as ideological dis-

tance between themselves and those who disagreed

with them. Soon the crowd had parted into two

hostile camps, glaring at each other and shouting

slogans and insults at their fellow citizens. Even the

acutely disciplined safeties began to let their masks

of neutrality slip, betraying their inclinations and

allegiances with a slightly downturned lip here, an

arched eyebrow or furrowed brow there.

    Marvelous, Gorgan thought, delighted to see the

people turning on themselves, splitting apart along

generational lines. Just marvelous. It was his curse

and his glory that he could only achieve and wield

power through the manipulation of others, but that

restriction was of little import when such creatures

as these proved so easy to beguile.

    "And what of the trillions of inhabitants of the

inner worlds?" the older woman challenged the

youth. "Are you prepared to cope with the count-

less refugees the dying sun will send stampeding in

our direction? Not to mention the loss of our

history, the end of all archaeological research into

the distant past, the utter destruction of sites and

natural wonders hallowed by millions of years of

striving and civilization?" She paused for breath,

then turned around to face the divided assemblage.

"Don't future generations deserve a chance to gaze

upon the sacred shore of Azzapa? Or walk in the

footsteps of Llaxem or Yson?" She held out her

hands to the crowd, pleading for their understand-

ing. "Don't you see? If we let Tkon and the other

worlds be destroyed, then we're cutting out the

very heart of the culture we all share."

    Gorgan was disturbed to see uncertainty upon

the faces of some of the younger members of the

audience. He scowled at the aging bureaucrat

whose words appeared to be striking a nerve in

listeners both young and old. She's making too

much sense, he brooded. Something has to be done.

    Leaving the leader of the dissidents to his own

devices, Gorgan glided down the steps toward the

woman, the hem of his voluminous gown leaving

no trail upon the polished surface of the steps. He

crept silently to her side until his face was only a

finger away from her ear. You don't stand a chance,

he whispered. You're too old. Your time has passed.

    Higher upon the crystal steps, the youth called

Jenole attempted to regain the mob's attention,

along with the loyalty of his followers. "Tkon's no

heart. It's just a planet, a big rock in the endless

null... like a hundred million other worlds." He

thumped a fist against his chest, raising his voice to

 heighten the impact of his impassioned declara-

 tion. "The real heart of the empire is right here! On

 Rzom, and inside us all!"

    His fellow students cheered in unison, some of

them a bit less robustly than before, drawing mur-

derous looks from the opposing camp. The narrow

gazes of the safeties arced back and forth between

the students and their critics, watching both sides

carefully. The silicon rings on their fingers glinted

beneath the elevated lights of the plaza, which cast

a gentle, faintly violet radiance over all that tran-

spired.

    "But that doesn't mean anything," the function-

ary protested, responding to Jenole's shouted claim

to the heart of the empire. She tried to match his

fiery intensity, but found her will and energy

fading. It's no use, a voice at the back of her mind

whispered, sounding very much like her own.

There's no point, you've already lost. Despite sever-

al layers of insulated fabric to protect her from the

winter, she felt a chill work its way into the marrow

of her bones. Tkon is doomed. Nobody cares. The

sun is dying and so are you ....

    Still, she tried to rally her spirits, fighting against

the despair and hopelessness that descended over

her like a suffocating fog. "No, you don't under-

stand. We have a choice." She could barely hear her

own words over the insidious voice inside her skull

(It's a lost cause), but she struggled to force her

argument out through her lips. "We can either run

from the disaster or prevent it. Diaspora or deliver-

ance."

    "What's that?" her opponent seemed to bellow

at her. "Speak up. We can't hear you."

    Sadness shrouded her like a heavy net, dragging

her down. "What do you want?" she murmured.

There is no hope. Her chin sagged against her chest

as her gaze dropped to the uncaring steps below.

They'll never learn. "Why won't you listen? We

have a choice. It doesn't have to happen .... "

    She receded back into the crowd, as if drawn by

some inexorable gravitational force, leaving Got-

gan alone and triumphant upon the lower steps.

Despair is a powerful weapon, he gloated, especially

for those already feeling the tug of entropy upon

their bodies and souls. He contemplated the victor

of the debate, standing tall before the imposing

edifice behind him, blithely incognizant of the

alien influences that had driven his critic from the

field. Arrogance, too, has its uses. With both tools at

my disposal, I can sever any bond, tear asunder any

union, and work my will on the scraps that remain.

    One of those scraps, clad in a cloak as florid as

his oratory, trumpeted his cause to the entire plaza.

"You see, the rightness of our position cannot be

denied! Down with the musty memory of Tkon.

The future belongs to the new age of Rzom!"

    His peers took up his cry, but at the fringes of the

crowd people began to drift away. The older citi-

zens in particular, having lost their most vocal

advocate, seemed to lose interest in the confronta-

tion. One by one, they turned away, shrugging

dismissively. It was cold out, after all, and they had

better things to do. Beneath their crisp, spotless

uniforms, the coiled muscles of the safeties geared

down to an only slightly lessened state of readiness.

    Gorgan noticed the difference and, noticing,

frowned. The situation had plateaued too soon and

now ran the risk of inspiring nothing more than

empty rhetoric. He could not settle for mere words,

no matter how inflammatory. It was time to up the

stakes, accelerate the conflict to the next level. He

eyed the safeties, so self-assured in their authority,

and smirked in anticipation of what was to come.

You have no idea what awaits you.

    He did not need to draw any nearer to the

cocksure youth standing astride the top steps to

project his new suggestions into such a willing

mind. He rode the momentum he had already

brought about to egg the self-infatuated student

leader on to greater heights of rebellion.

    "Friends, allies, brothers and sisters in arms,"

Jenole called out, the regal facade of the governor's

palace looming behind him. "Listen to me. We

need to send a message to everyone who has tried

to force down our throats their Great Endeavor."

He spat out the name as if it were an obscenity. "To

the governor, to the selfish cowards back on Tkon,

and even to the empress herself."

    Leaping onto the uppermost step, beneath the

carved crystal archway of the grand entrance, he

aimed an accusing finger at the statue of the empress

upon her pedestal. "There she is," he hollered, "the

architect of this entire insane enterprise."

 

    Not far away, but separated from this moment

and place by a phase or two of reality, a time-lost

starship captain flinched at the word "enterprise" as

he heard it translated into his own tongue. The

name reminded him of dangers and responsibilities

he was not being allowed to face. "Q," he began.

    "Sssh," Q hushed him, watching 0 and his

younger self watching Gorgan watching the Rzom.

"Pay attention, Jean-Luc. You may find the modus

operandi quite instructive. I certainly did."

 

    "Let's show the galaxy that we mean what we

say," the Rzom youth continued, "that we refuse to

blindly worship the past. Down with that monu-

ment to folly. Down with the empress?

    Incited by their spokesman, the mob of students

rushed the statue, climbing onto the pedestal and

throwing their weight against the marble figure.

Horrified by this attempt at vandalism, a few of the

older citizens tried to intervene, placing themselves

between the statue and the next wave of demon-

strators, but they were quickly shoved aside by the

overexcited students. Fists were raised and angry

words exchanged, prompting the safeties to take

action at last. "Attention," the senior safety an-

nounced, her voice artificially amplified by a mech-

anism planted against the base of her throat. "Step

away from the statue at once. This gathering is

declared a threat to public order and is hereby

terminated. All citizens are directed to refrain

from further debate and to exit the plaza in an

orderly fashion."

    The safety's instructions chastened a fraction of

those assembled, who froze sheepishly in their

tracks, then began to slink away; lawlessness did

not come easily to people who had known decades

of peace and stability. But the majority of the

students, whose memories were shorter and whose

law-abiding habits were less deeply ingrained, ig-

nored the safety, continuing to clamber over the

marble monument like Belzoidian fleas swarming

over an unguarded piece of cake, while shouting

and cheering uproariously. They appeared to be

having the time of their lives, much to the delight

of Gorgan. Tools that enjoyed their work always

performed better than those who had to be grudg-

ingly forced to their tasks. He nodded approvingly

as a jubilant young Rzom started swinging back

and forth from the outstretched arm of the

sculpted empress.

    The senior safety, on the other hand, scowled

grimly at the sight. She had been afraid of this; the

disturbance had already escalated too far, too fast.

Choosing not to waste time with any further warn-

ings, she sent a silent electronic signal to her fellow

safeties, then aimed the ring on her left forefinger

at the youth hanging from the statue's arm.

 A beam of directed energy, fluorescently orange,

leaped from the ring, targeting the would-be van-

dal, who instantly disappeared from sight. The

safety smiled in satisfaction, knowing that the

reckless youth had been painlessly transferred to a

holding facility at headquarters several city blocks

away. Not for the first time, she wondered how

safeties had ever managed before transference

technology became so convenient; she could just

imagine the incredible nuisance of having to physi-

cally subdue and transport each offender before

placing them into a cell.

    Around the plaza, each of the five safeties used

their rings to thin out the crowd of students attack-

ing the monument. As expected, the mere sight of

their friends being deleted from the scene was

enough to discourage several of the students, who

backed away from the statue and each other, clearly

unwilling to spend the night in a pacification cell,

and probably not too eager to explain to their

parents and tutors exactly how they ended up

there. The senior safety permitted herself a sigh of

relief; for a few seconds there, she had worried that

she'd waited too long before attempting to dispel

the agitated crowd. Now, though, the situation

seemed to be coming under control.

    But the student leader, not to mention Gorgan,

would not surrender so easily. Urged on by his

anonymous muse, Jenole entreated his followers to

carry on their crusade in the face of the safeties's

resistance. "Don't give up!" he cried out. "This is

our moment, our chance to demonstrate once and

for all that we will not be herded into submission,

that we can take control of our destiny no matter

who stands against us!"

    His words had an impact on his peers, who kept

storming the statue even as their fellow rebels

disappeared left and right. Cracks formed in the

marble surface of the monument, branching out

from each other like twigs on a tree branch. An

ominous scraping noise emerged from the base of

the stature, where the empress's sculpted feet met

the pedestal below. Beams of light picked off the

demonstrators as they climbed out onto the arms

and shoulders of the statue, but new bodies re-

placed those that vanished almost as quickly as

their predecessors were transferred away. "That's

right!" Jenole encouraged them from the top of the

steps. "Don't let them break our spirits with their

cowardly ploys. Show them that the future belongs

to us!"

    "Doesn't he ever run out of breath?" the senior

safety muttered to herself. Turning away from the

besieged monument, she directed both her ring and

her attention at the students' ringleader, who

presented quite an inviting target as he posed

before the palace, his garish red cloak flapping in

the wind. With any luck, deleting that loud-

mouthed boy would suck the wildfire out of the rest

of the protestors.

    No, Gotgan thought, shaking his head slowly. He

would not allow the furor he had created to be so

readily extinguished. As the safety took aim at

Jenole, Gorgan summoned his power by clenching

his fists and pantomiming a pounding motion with

his hands, tapping one fist upon the other with a

steady, deliberate rhythm. Without even realizing

he was doing it, Jenole mimicked the gesture,

pounding his own fists together in time with his

unseen mentor just as the transference beam

locked on to him.

 Nothing happened.

    To the safety's astonishment, Jenole remained

where he stood, defying her attempt to relocate

him. She blinked and tried again, with equally

nonexistent results. The safety did not understand,

and Jenole looked a bit bewildered as well; neither

of them had ever known a safety's equipment to

malfunction before. Only Gorgan, his upper hand

silently hammering the fist below, greeted this new

complication with aplomb. The surprises are only

beginning, he promised.

    The confused safety wagged her hand from the

wrist up, hoping she could somehow shake her ring

back into life. When that proved futile, she sent a

private audio transmission to the two nearest safe-

ties. A lighted visual display sewn into her right

sleeve instantly informed her of their ranks and

identity numbers. "One-one-two-eight, six-seven-

four, target subject at top of steps immediately.

Priority $kr'zta."

    Responding without hesitation, two uniformed

figures, previously facing the endangered statue,

swiveled at the waist and directed beams of cadmi-

um light at Jenole. Either ray, the senior safety

knew, would communicate his coordinates to the

central processor, initiating the transference. The

outspoken student gulped visibly as the twin beams

intersected upon his chest right above his heart,

but he continued to make that peculiar pounding

gesture, for reasons neither he nor the safeties truly

understood.

    Whatever he was doing was obviously working.

The other safeties exchanged baffled looks as Je-

hole persisted in striking a dramatic pose overlook-

ing the plaza, despite the best efforts of three

safeties--and advanced Tkon technology--to re-

move him. Now it was the senior safety's turn to

swallow nervously, flinching involuntarily as one

of the empress's marble arms broke away from her

body, plummeting onto the tiled floor of the plaza

to shatter into two pieces. With her pacification

ring rendered unaccountably impotent, the safety

felt like she had lost her own arm as well. "Get the

safeties," Jenole instructed the other dissidents.

"Their rings are useless now. Don't let them stop

US!"

    That those last two statements were mutually

contradictory did not bother any of the students,

who divided their efforts between toppling the

now-mutilated statue and assailing the safeties,

who suddenly found themselves outnumbered and

unarmed. No safety had carried any physical weap-

ons for years; why bother when any implement that

might be needed could be summoned instantane-

ously by means of their rings? All at once, the

senior safety found herself longing for an old-

fashioned roeson rifle--or even a big stick.

    She tried to summon reinforcements, only to

discover that the communicator at her throat had

gone as dead as the silicon ring on her finger.

Gritting her teeth, she tried to will the ring back

into operation, but the accursed thing couldn't

even produce a faint orange glow anymore. Its

failure--impossible, inexplicable--left her with

no hope of quelling the disturbance, let alone

protecting herself. A tide of shrieking students,

intoxicated with the heady bouquet of insurrec-

tion, flooded over her. She felt frenzied hands

grabbing her, tugging at her ring, nearly breaking

her finger in the process. The ring slipped free,

scraping her knuckles red, and the crowd tossed

her aside. She went stumbling across the floor of

the plaza, falling onto her knees and barely throw-

ing her hands out in time to stop her face from

hitting the hard ceramic tiles.

    A moment later, there was a ghastly wrenching

noise, as the statue was torn from its pedestal and

its heavy weight crashed to the ground, shaking the

tiles beneath her palms and knees. A marble head

bearing a marble crown rolled across the plaza

until it came to a rest only a few arm's lengths away

from the shaken safety. Its features, once beautiful

and serene, were now chipped and gouged, looking

up at the night sky with only the scarred vestiges of

its former grace.

 

 

  The empress had fallen.

    "Yes!" Jenole crowed to the students below him,

Gorgan perching behind him like a shadow. "No

one in the empire can ignore us now!" His victori-

ous compatriots hooted and howled in jubilation,

letting the battered safeties creep away to safety. A

blond-haired girl danced atop the empty pedestal

while her friends in the crowd tossed fragments of

the shattered statue among themselves, claiming

pieces as souvenirs.

    "That's right, celebrate!" Someone tossed Jenole

the head of the empress, which he held aloft

triumphantly, his golden eyes aglow, his cheeks

flushed with excitement. "We've won. The night is

ours." His gaze swept over the throng of ecstatic

students, making certain he had their full atten-

tion. "But this is just the beginning." Gorgan's lips

moved soundlessly and the words emerged from

Jenole's throat, his voice alive with passion and

commitment. "But this is just the beginning.

There's an industrial transfer station only a few

blocks from here, down by the River Hessari,

where thousands of cauldrons of pure tmirsh are

marked for delivery to the Great Expenditure. Raw

material, torn from our planet and our people,

never to return!"

    The rioters booed and shouted profanities. Gor-

gan felt his power grow with the crowd's intensity.

This was just like the old days, before O's downfall.

This time it will be different, he vowed. No one can

hinder us.

 

    "Those cauldrons belong to us," Jenole declared,

"and I say they're not going anywhere. Now is the

time for us to take back our destiny." He dropped

the defaced marble head and let it roll awkwardly

down the steps into the crowd, eliciting a full-

throated hurrah from his peers. "Those cauldrons

are waiting for us," he asserted, pointing past the

plaza toward the riverfront. "Are you with me?"

    The crowd's response was both overwhelming

and inevitable. Any possible opposition had either

fled in retreat or succumbed to the revolutionary

fever. Unwilling or unable to defy the mob, the

governor remained locked inside his mansion,

while fresh safeties, summoned no doubt by ob-

servers within the palace, cordoned off the plaza,

reluctant to engage the demonstrators until the

mystery of their equipment's failure could be ade-

quately explained.

    But there was no time for answers. Running

down the steps, taking them two at a time, Jenole

set off a stampede of eager and unthinking young

men and women streaming toward the far end of

the plaza--and the line of turquoise figures who

waited to halt their progress. Seen from above, as

Gorgon levitated above the fray, the rampaging

students resembled a surging sea, their knotted

tresses bobbing like waves driven by a storm.

    The newly arrived safeties never stood a chance.

A deluge of amok Rzom youth crashed against

them, meeting only inactive technology, and broke

through their ranks, pouring into the city streets

and shattering the quiet of the evening with their

chants and cries and uninhibited laughter. The

gates of the transfer station presented even less

resistance than the cordon around the plaza. The

night shift stepped back, frightened and uncompre-

hending as their sons and daughters tore through

the unguarded facility, wreaking havoc on data files

and delicate apparatus, shoving fragile exports off

transporter platforms and stasis units alike, then

converging on the preservation dome where mate-

rials allocated for the Great Endeavor were kept

until needed.

    The pillar of steam that rose from the River

Hessari as countless units of molten tmirsh were

dumped into its rushing amethyst currents could

be seen from one end of the city to another. Some

said, and they were correct, that the gigantic plume

of heated vapor was even witnessed by imperial

satellites in orbit around Rzom, who transmitted

the image instantaneously to the empress herself.

    Gorgan basked in the satisfaction of a job well

done. He had planted the seed. Now it was up to

his allies to nurture and cultivate the crop.

 Until it was time for the harvest.

 

Chapter Nine

 

In the tenth year in the reign of the empress:

 

THE IMPERIAL FLEET WAITED just past the asteroid

belt that divided the inner worlds of the Tkon

Empire, including Tkon itself, from their rebellious

siblings beyond the belt. At the prime-control of

the scout ship Bastu, at the forward tip of the

formation, Null Pilot Lapu Ordaln stayed attuned

to his long-distance surveyors and wondered if he

could ever possibly be ready for what was to come.

    A battle such as was about to take place had not

been fought since the Age of Xora, innumerable

generations ago. Indeed, it was practically unheard-

of to have this many vessels in the void at one time;

safe and effective travel by transference had largely

rendered nullcraft obsolete, except for exploration

and warfare. The average citizen had not needed to

ride a rocket from one planet to another since

his grandfather's time, at least until recently,

when the present crisis brought commerce and

contact between the empire and the rebel worlds

to a halt. "Hell-wings," he cursed aloud. Why

couldn't Rzom and the other outer planets simply

go along with the Great Endeavor like the rest of

the empire? What in Makto's name had driven

them to mount this insane rebellion, putting

everyone at risk? Rend it all, he had friends on

Rzom, even a cousin or two. Why, then, this

senseless war?

    To be fair, sages and opinionators still argued

about who had truly started the war, the empire

trying to quell uprisings on the outer worlds, or the

rebels encroaching on imperial space to sabotage

the Great Endeavor. Never mind who began it, he

told himself, trying to ready his spirits for the

confrontation ahead. Our job now is to end it, one

way or another.

    He glanced around the habitation bulb of Bastu,

exchanging a glance with his subpilot, Nasua

Ztrahs, strapped into her own control less than an

arm's length away. Aside from them, no other

living creature breathed within the bulb; all of the

vital functions of the vessel, including attack and

defense modes, were operated by the ship itself,

with its organic pilots ready to override the think-

ing chips only in the event of some genuinely

unforeseen circumstance. One pilot was practically

superfluous; a subpilot to take over if the prime was

disabled was an extra level of redundancy, dictated

as much by tradition as by cautious calculation.

Besides, Ordaln thought bitterly, if there wasn't

some flesh and blood at stake, how could you call it

a war?

    There. Here they come. The ship's surveyors

detected the approach of the enemy armada, alert-

ing the null pilot at the speed of thought. Funny, it

still felt wrong to think of Rzom as the enemy.

Defensive systems came to life all around the bulb

as the cerebral imager projected three-dimensional

graphics of the oncoming ships directly into his

mind. He heard Ztrahs suck in her breath and

knew that she had received the same input. Testing

the imager compulsively, as if every component of

Bastu had not already been checked out by imperi-

al shipwrights, he confirmed that he could switch

back and forth at will between a subjective ship's-

eye view of the battle to an objective, omniscient

overview of the entire conflict. He was relieved to

note that, just as their informants had reported, the

imperial ships outnumbered their rebel counter-

parts at least three to one. We'll make short work of

them, he thought, no matter how bloody a business

it proves to be.

    "For Tkon and the empress," he said, loud

enough for Ztrahs to hear. It was a null pilot's job

to maintain proper morale, even for a crew of two.

    "For Tkon and the empress," she answered back,

her voice tense but controlled. It dawned on Or-

daln that she probably had friends and relations on

the other side, too.

 

    Then the first of the enemy vessels was upon

them ....

 

    Almost, (*) thought hungrily. The clash it had

been waiting for was only instants away. At the

moment, it sensed more dread than anger among

the participants, more apprehension than aggres-

sion, but that would change once the fighting

started. Hate would come to the fore, and then (*)

would feed.

 And feed well.

    Holding the enemy within their sights, monitor-

ing each other's advance to the tiniest degree,

neither side took notice of a flickering sphere of

crimson energy spinning fiercely less than a light-

year away, emitting a faint red radiance that failed

to register on either imperial or rebel sensors. (*)

also observed the disparity in strength between the

two forces, and resolved to address that problem

soon enough. It held no favorites in the coming

contest, only a determination that both victory and

defeat be forestalled for as long as possible. Only

the war itself mattered; the fury and strife were

their own reward.

    The imperial fleet fanned out in three dimen-

sions, assuming a pyramid formation with its point

aimed straight at the heart of the rebel armada,

which responded by angling outward and away

from their center, forming a sideways funnel whose

open mouth expanded as if to swallow the advan-

cing pyramid. For a brief moment, as the forward

end of the armada spread out like concentric

ripples upon the surface of a pond, it looked like

the larger, imperial fleet might pass through the

opposing forces without even engaging the enemy,

but the imperial pyramid flattened out abruptly as

the warships that comprised its base raced to

intersect the circumference of the gigantic, empty

loop the invading armada had become. All along

the periphery of both fleets, imperial and rebel

ships rushed headlong at each other, unable to

evade direct confrontation any longer.

    Not even (*) could tell which side fired first. As

swiftly and nigh simultaneously as if a switch had

been activated, bursts of incandescent energy

jumped from ship to ship to ship, linking hundreds

of nullcraft in an intricate and ever-shifting lattice

of red and purple beams of light that knitted the

edges of both fleets to each other, locking them into

a taut, violently twisting tapestry that only total

defeat or victory could rip apart. Projectile weap-

ons, powered by their own destructive energies,

carried the battle deeper into the masses of the

opposing forces, arcing through the void to hurl

themselves at inhabited vessels several hundred

times larger than the unmanned missiles that per-

ished in sacrificial blazes against the hulls of their

targets. The narrowing space between the contend-

ing fleets filled with fire and debris.

    Despite heavy shielding on the part of both

adversaries, the furious exchange of armaments

claimed its first casualties within minutes. Un-

scratched, untested void fighters, subjected to doz-

ens of assaults from above and below, succumbed

to destruction and/or decompression. Transitory

flashes of unfettered plasma strobed the battle

lines, sparking anguish and desire for revenge

among the surviving combatants. Abstract political

differences suddenly became deadly personal as

pilots on both sides dived and ducked amid the

chaos, striking back with every tactic and weapon

at their command. More ships fell before the

inferno, leaving the remaining ships ever more

intent on exacting retribution.

    (*) savored the unleashed hate and fury of the

volatile humanoids within their metallic convey-

ances. Its only fear was that the hostilities would

terminate too soon, before it had drained every last

drop of sustenance from the unsuspecting mortals.

Avidly, it examined the ongoing encounter, sub-

jecting the entire battle to its keen and far too

experienced analysis. How best, it meditated, to

prolong the conflict?

    Ironically, the ships, large and small, that com-

prised both fleets were virtually identical in design,

not surprising considering that not long ago they

had indeed composed a single unified force, before

time and trouble outpaced their common ancestry.

Only carefully guarded roeson signatures kept

allied vessels from firing upon each other in

confusion. (*) rotated thoughtfully, seeing all the

possibilities.

 

     For the first few minutes, Lapu Ordaln found

 himself at the still, silent center of the storm. The

 Rzom nullcraft had all darted away to the perime-

 ter, leaving behind an empty hole at the core of

 their formation. He experienced a moment of

 private relief at this momentary respite, even

 though he knew he couldn't allow the rebels to

 evade him this easily. If fortune was with Tkon, his

 comrades behind him would halt the enemy's ad-

 vance long enough for Bastu to reverse course and

 catch up with the fight.

    "Let's go get them," he stated decisively, while

psionically urging his ship to switch to pursuit

mode. Bastu executed a flawless crescent turn that

sent them speeding toward the action, which, as

the imager showed him, had already begun. In his

mind's eye, he saw the fighting flare up at the

outskirts of the rebel armada, then work its way

inward, zigzagging through the rapidly intermesh-

ing fleets like spidery cracks fragmenting a sheet of

ice. The meson tracking system functioned per-

fectly, tracing imperial ships in blue and rebel

vessels in red. To his dismay, he watched as, one at

a time, graphics both blue and red vanished neatly

from the display.

    We couM be next, he realized, feeling a bitter

resentment toward the Rzom lunatics who had

brought them all to this sorry pass. He wanted to

look away, but the cerebral imager made that

impossible. The more he squeezed his eyelids shut,

the more clearly he saw the deadly conflagration

that was drawing him closer by the second, like a

charged particle to a blazing atomic core. He

braced his back against the gravity cushion and

tugged on the straps of his harness to make certain

they were secure. Bastu was coming within range of

its weapons capacity, not to mention close enough

to draw fire from the enemy. Time to kill or be

killed. Thank Ozari that the ship actually did the

targeting, sparing him and Ztrahs that awful re-

sponsibility.

    Without warning, the red and blue outlines

marking each nullcraft disappeared from the dis-

play. His eyes opened wide in surprise, but the

image remained the same. Suddenly there was no

way to distinguish imperial ships from the rebels,

friend from foe. Bastu's attack systems froze even

as the ship plunged into the melee, the thinking

chips paralyzed by this unexpected loss of crucial

data.

    "Lapu?" his subpilot asked, confusion evident in

her tone. Obviously she was receiving the same

inadequate display from the imager.

    "Reinitialize the entire system," he replied. "Do

whatever you can to get the accursed thing up and

running again. Quickly." In the meantime, he

realized with a start, he would have to take over

control of the weapons from the ship. He was

fighting this war for real.

    But what good could he do? Bastu weaved effec-

tively through the crowded nun-space, avoiding

collisions with the other warships, but Ordain did

not know what else could be done. He couldn't just

fire blindly; given the relative size of the fleets, he

was more likely to hit one of his own ships than a

rebel. "Lapu--I mean, Pilot Ordalnl" Ztrahs re-

ported within moments, visibly aghast. "It's not

just us. It's everyone, us and the enemy both.

Nobody's markers are working."

    How was that possible? A solar flare? A transreal

anomaly? Ordain didn't even try to figure it out; he

was a pilot, not a techner. Instead his mind in-

stantly grasped the strategic implications of what

had happened; all at once, the empire's numerical

superiority had become a liability. Without the

meson tags, the rebels had better odds of hitting

their enemies than he did.

    "They did it on purpose!" he blurted, blood

pounding in his temples as the truth struck him

with the force of orbital acceleration. What manner

of crazed, reckless ploy was this? Fighting in the

dark like this might get them all killed. Didn't so

many lives, Tkon or Rzom, mean anything to

them? "They're insane, all of them! Fanatics!"

 But he wouldn't let them get away with it ....

 

    Yes, (*) approved, basking in the renewed waves

of enmity suffusing the sector. The warriors of the

inner planets would not overcome those of the

outer worlds so easily now. Their frustration fed

their animosity, feeding (*), just as the desperation

of all concerned only heightened the intensity of

their violent passions. This was more than mere

nourishment now; it was an exquisite delicacy.

    (*) spun silently in the depths of space, lapping

up the hate that spilled like blood. Best of all, it had

not yet approached the very peak of its feeding

cycle. The more the organic specimens hated, the

stronger (*) grew, and the stronger it became, the

better it could fan the flames of the conflict, toying

with the minds and matter below it to yield ever

greater rewards.

 As it did now.

 

 Rzom trash. It was all their fault.

    Another shudder shook the habitation bulb as

Bastu came under attack again. Ordaln unleashed a

volley of concentrated plasma bolts at the nearest

vessel, not caring terribly whether it hailed from

Tkon or Rzom or any of the other worlds that had

been dragged into this stinking bloodbath. They

had attacked him, that was enough, so he emptied

his arsenal at them, then waited for the pulse

cannons to recharge.

    Tkon can still win, he realized, even with every-

one shooting randomly. We can triumph by attri-

tion, when the last rebel craft has been reduced to

null-dust. He just had to stay alive until then, and

the best way to do that was to fire at anything that

came within range of his weapons. "Blast them all,

and let Ozari take Their pick," he growled, his

throat bubbling over with bile. He launched a brace

of cobalt missiles at a suspicious-looking scout ship

at sixty degrees, and was gratified to see it spiral

away in flames. "Isn't that right, Nasua?"

    The subpilot was dead, killed by a jagged piece

of silicon crystal that had broken through the

habitation bubble during the last missile strike.

Ordain wasn't worried. She wouldn't be dead

much longer. Already both pilot and bulb were

repairing themselves, the crystal shard retracting

back into Bastu's internal mechanisms, the pierced

plasteel shell of the bulb knitting itself shut miracu-

lously. Time almost seemed to be running in re-

verse as the gaping wound in Ztrahs's throat

closed, leaving not even a scar behind. Ordain

watched, unsurprised, at the way the color came

back into her expression. Her lifeless golden eyes

blinked, then looked back at him. "They killed me

again?" she asked, sounding more annoyed than

distressed.

    "Yes," he replied curtly. It was nothing new; they

had each been killed a couple times already. But

Ozari would not let them die, it seemed, as long as

the fight continued. Their wounds healed magi-

cally, their ship kept repaired, their weapons per-

petually replenished... what more proof did they

need that the fates were on their side? This had

become a holy war, and Ordain was more than

happy to wipe the rebel dirt from existence, no

matter how many times he had to die. He'd had

friends among the Rzom, sure, and family, too, but

they were nothing to him now, not anymore. All

that mattered was winning the war, which meant

destroying the enemy once and for all.

    He launched more missiles, one in every direc-

tion, confident that no matter how many he fired,

there would always be more. He was glad that he

had taken control of the weapons himself. It was

more satisfying this way. "Die, rebels, die!" he

chanted, and Ztrahs joined in, laughing mania-

cally. "Death to the Rzom!"

 And the battle went on and on ....

 

Chapter Ten

 

In the fiftieth year of the reign of the empress:

 

FAR FROM THE STRESSES OF WORK OR WAR, a photon

wave engineer named Kelica udHosn stretched

out upon a leased solo lifter and went fishing for

birds. Elsewhere in the empire, there was strife

and nullfleets were clashing, but not here on Wsor,

deep in the heart of the inner worlds, between

sacred Tkon and the dying sun. Kelica's shallow

float drifted several lengths below a billowing

bank of swollen tangerine clouds. A thin line of

polynitrated filament stretched upward from the

reel in her left hand to somewhere deep within

the cloud directly overhead. A minus-gray hook,

baited with a piece of raw ewone, waited for any

unwary avians who might be lured by the glisten-

ing magenta pulp.

 To be completely up-front about it, Kelica didn't

care if she caught a plump galebird or not. This was

the first vacation she'd had from the Great Endeav-

or in what felt like a radioactive half-life and it was

enough simply to waft through the sky on the

gentle wind currents, the clouds above her, the

rolling umber hills of the Maelisteen countryside

far beneath. Yes, this was exactly what she needed

after seven months of balancing and rebalancing

the light index ratios for the proposed solar trans-

ference. For Ozari's sake, the tired old sun wasn't

going to flare out anytime this week. The Great

Endeavor could do without her for a few days.

    She rolled onto her side and took a sip of the

spicy nectar in the juiceskin beside her. An ele-

vated calciate ridge, about a hand's breadth high,

ran along the perimeter of her oblong lifter, pre-

venting her from tumbling off its padded surface

carelessly, even though she kept her emergency

floater belt on just in case. She gazed out at the

breathtaking scenery available to her from her lofty

vantage point; aside from another float on the

horizon, she had the whole sky to herself. That was

the great thing about Wsor: As one of the inner-

most planets, the war with the outer worlds had

barely touched it so far. Peeking over the edge of

the safety ridge, she saw Proutu Mountain rising to

the southeast, its snowcapped peak reflected in the

glassy surface of Lake Vailos. A few small pleasure

rafts, looking like discarded wood shavings from

this high up, nestled atop the lake, prompting her

to wonder why anyone would still go fishing the

old-fashioned way when they could go trolling

through the clouds instead.

    Lazy minutes passed without a single tug on her

line, and Kelica began to feel just the tiniest bit

bored. Closing her eyes and activating the implant

at the base of her brain, she tapped into the psi-

network, her mind scanning the local emanations

for something interesting.

    People of Wsor, turn away from your sin and

arrogance. Pay heed to The One who stands in

judgment above you all. The days of your folly are

numbered. Great is The One who comes from be-

yond....

    What was this, some kind of crazy religious

wavecast? Might be good for a giggle or two, she

decided as she adjusted her sun-warmed limbs

against the cushions and took another sip of the

nectar. The float coasted south toward the moun-

tain, blown along by a cooling breeze.

    ... unto you and yours shall the overweening

pride of your ancestors be held to account, even unto

the end of days. Repent of your wayward paths, for

The One will brook no impiety nor disrespect. Yea,

even if no more than one soul shall turn away from

The One, then all shall be punished. Many will fall

before His Wrath, and those that live through the

first chastisement will surely long for the sweet

release of death ....

    Okay, okay, Kelica thought. She got the message,

which was exhausting its novelty value at amazing

speed. Who would actually want to listen to this

blather? She searched for something else on the

adjacent psi-bands.

    ú.. and the signs of His Judgment shall be writ-

ten among the elements. Fire and water shall be His

Rod and His Scourge, just as the rocks below and

sky above ....

    Huh? How did she get this again? She tried

another neural frequency.

    ú.. and there shall be neither peace nor mercy,

neither pardon nor deliverance ....

    For the first time, she began to feel slightly

nervous. The demented rantings seemed to all over

the psi-scape, supplanting even the imperial news

and weather wavecasts. She even tried accessing

some of the more popular erotic transmissions, but

to no avail. The apocalyptic warnings were every-

where, and expressly where they didn't belong.

    Fall upon your knees and pray for salvation, but it

shah not be forthcoming. The time for redemption

has passed. Now comes The One and His Anger is

great....

    It must be a psychological propaganda offensive,

she realized, but how had the Rzom insurrection-

ists succeeded in hijacking the entire psionic net-

work? And did they really expect modern-minded

Tkon to fall for all this pompous mumbo-jumbo?

    A yank upon her hand reminded her of her

fishing line, which she had completely forgotten.

Automatically she began reeling the taut filament

in, too preoccupied by the unsettling wavecast to

even wonder what she had caught. She was only

planning to let the bird go anyway. She liked

snaring the pretty birds, but saw no point in letting

them suffer afterward. That was just pointless

cruelty.

    A deafening boom came without warning, the

shock wave rocking the small lifter and tossing her

backward against the cushions. Her elbow collided

with the juiceskin, squirting nectar onto her side.

Grabbing the safety ridge with her free hand, she

pulled herself up to a sitting position and looked

with amazement to the south.

    The top of Proutu Mountain wasn't there any-

more. Instead of the white-frosted peak she had

admired only minutes before, a tremendous explo-

sion of smoke and ash as large as the mountain

itself gushed from an open crater, spewing flame

and red-hot magma. Rivers of glowing lava poured

over the jagged rim of the crater, racing the swiftly

melting snow down the side of the mountain--no,

the volcano!--and flooding into the wide-open

reservoir of the lake, where a gigantic wall of steam

rose into the air, obscuring her view of the moun-

tain itself. The once-placid surface of the lake

churned and bubbled, turning into an enormous

cauldron of boiling mud and water.

    Proutu had erupted. But that was impossible; the

mountain had been extinct for aeons. All the travel

data said so. And there hadn't been any signs or

indications. No preliminary tremors, no geother-

mal disturbances. No warning at all, except:

 Behold His Justice, and tremble. Look upon the

retribution of The One and know that the harrowing

has just begun ....

    "Sacred Ozari," she whispered. This couldn't be

happening, but it was. Her ears still ached from

that first cataclysmic detonation. A noxious odor,

like sulfur or macrum, teased her nostrils. Ignoring

the sticky wetness of the nectar spilling onto the

floor of the float, she retained the presence of mind

to press down with her thumb upon the release

switch of her fishing reel, slicing through the fila-

ment and setting the unseen avian free. Then she

looked back down at the frothing lake beneath her.

None of the tourist rafts had overturned yet, but

dead fish were floating to surface by the hundreds,

turning the murky waters into a grotesque, colossal

bouillabaisse.

    ú.. nothing shall be spared, neither the beasts of

the field, nor the swimmers in the deep ....

    Fortunately, the initial shock wave had sent her

gliding away from the volcano. Thank... some-

one... that she hadn't been any closer to the

mountain when it blew. She started to activate the

auto-recall on the lifter, intending to get back to

the launch center as quickly as possible, when she

remembered the other float she had glimpsed earli-

er. Could that poor individual possibly have sur-

vived?

    Holding the float in place by mental control, she

peered back into the roiling fog of smoke and

steamú The acrid smell was getting stronger by the

moment; she could feel it stinging at the back of her

throat. "Hello?' she called out hoarsely. "Is there

anybody there?" There was no point scanning for a

psychic cry for assistance; that malevolent sermon,

which sounded like pure gloating now, was still

raving across every psi-band, swamping everything

else. She could hear that harsh, unforgiving voice

bellowing inside her skull, no matter how hard she

tried to shut it out. She shut down her implant

entirely, but somehow the voice still came through.

    ... d~om the lower regions shall His Vengeance

come. As blazing as an inferno is the sting of His

Whip....

    Cupping her palm over her nose and mouth in a

fruitless attempt to keep out the increasingly corro-

sive fumes, she squinted with teary eyes into the

opaque black smoke. I can't wait any longer, she

thought. I have to turn back. Then she heard it.

    "Help me!" a strident voice cried out from

behind the curtain of fog. It was a man's voice,

steeped in terror. "Somebody help me!"

    Kelica hesitated, unwilling to steer her own float

into that lightless, tenebrous murk, but unable to

abandon the desperate stranger lost in the dark.

"Help, help me, please!" he screamed again, cough-

ing loudly afterward. He sounded like he was

choking.

    To her relief, the prow of the other lifter poked

from the sooty depths of the spreading smoke,

pulling the rest of the craft behind it. That surge of

hope was quickly replaced by fear when she saw

that the unlucky air-fisher was no longer safely

inside his craft, but was instead dangling by his

fingertips from the edge of the floatú "Don't panic,"

she whispered to herself, remembering the multiple

safety measures built into the floater belt around

his waist. He couldn't fall to his death if he tried. It

was scientifically impossible. Of course, that was

what they had said about Proutu erupting, too.

    As the stalks fall before the scythe, so shall the

unrighteous fall before The One. Nemesis is He, the

leveler of nations, the purifier of worlds ....

    Both man and floater were blackened with ash.

Sooty tears ran like rivulets down his cheeks,

streaking his face. "Just let go," Kelica called out,

worried about colliding with the other lifterú They

probably wouldn't hit hard enough to do any

damage, but she didn't feel like taking chances.

"Activate the minus-grav switch, and I'll come by

and pick you up."

    He tried to reply, but all that escaped his throat

was a raspy cough. He nodded, though, and closed

his eyes, mentally willing the belt into readiness.

His straining fingers let go of the float--and he fell

like a stone.

    What! She couldn't believe it. The belt should

have held him aloft. Why hadn't it worked? Her

mouth hung open, too shocked to even breathe,

while she watched the shrinking figure drop toward

the boiling lake. It's still all right, she remembered.

The emergency transfer will kick in any second now,

the moment he hits trigger velocity, transporting

him back to the center and canceling his downward

momentum. She waited anxiously for the falling

man to disintegrate into quantum particles.

    It never happened. She stared in horror as he

plummeted into the lake, the splash of his impact

lost amid the churning chaos of the reservoir.

Kelica gasped, sucking in air at last, only to choke

on the caustic smoke. Panic set in, spreading

through her like a fever. She had to get out of here

now! Back, she ordered the lifter, grateful that she

didn't have to breathe the word aloud. The fumes

were getting worse, making her sick.

    ú.. and the kingdom of the air shall crumble, and

the waters of life made into slaying venom ....

    "Shut up, shut up," she snapped, pressing her

hands against her ears. This was a nightmare. It

couldn't be real. "Stop it. I don't want to hear it."

    ú.. and the orchards will be as deserts, and the

skies as lifeless as the void....

    Something rough and feathery smacked against

her head, then rebounded onto the sticky floor of

the float. It was an adult galebird, its eyes glassy

and immobile, its beak locked open in silent pro-

test. She didn't need to feel for its hearts to know it

was dead. The fumes, she realized. The gases from

the volcano were killing the birds.

    ú.. aqom the meager to the mighty, from the lowly

to the lords of the spheres, none shall escape The

One....

    More downy bodies struck the lifter. They were

falling by the dozens now. She held up her hands to

shield her head as the shallow float teetered be-

neath the force of the avian downpour. The strick-

en birds began to pile up all around her, some of

them still alive, their crimson wings weakly flap-

ping, and a new fear struck her: What if the weight

of the birds overloaded the capacity of the float?

This was only a solo lifter!

    Frantically, she started bailing out the bottom of

the float, throwing the dead and dying birds over

the side as fast as she could manage, heedless of

the new feathered bodies slamming into her head

and shoulders, buffering the tiny craft while she

wheezed for breath amid the suffocating smoke.

But despite her frenzied efforts, the front of the

float tipped downward alarmingly, throwing her

forward onto her hands and knees among the grisly

carpet of dead birds, their tiny bones crunching

beneath her weight.

    ú.. for the greatest of the great is but a mote of

foulness in the sight of The One, as the most flawless

of gems is but a rough and coarsened stone in the

face of His Glory....

    She wanted to flee the lifter, jump free of the

float, but fright kept her frozen in place. What if

her belt didn't work, either? She tried to activate

either the minus-grav or the transfer alert, thinking

at the belt so hard that her brain hurt, but nothing

happened. She remained tethered by gravity to the

foundering lifter, even as it began to spiral irresisti-

bly toward the scalding water below, picking up

speed as it carried her inexorably toward annihila-

tion.

    ú.. thus shall perish the heretics and apostates,

the blasphemers and nonbelievers, for I am The

One, the alpha and omega, your beginning and your

end....

    The last thing she saw, before the terrifying

acceleration rendered her mercifully unconscious,

was something almost too incredible to believe,

even in the middle of a waking nightmare. It was

the bottom half of the mountain where, impossi-

bly, insanely, the flowing lava had carved a single

word into the granite side of the mountain, like an

artist aftaxing his signature to his latest master-

piece.

 It was the ancient Tkon symbol for the number

one.

 

 

Chapter Eleven

 

"All, I LOW 'mE LUSTER OF LAVA atop lesser life-

forms," 0 rhapsodized. "Between you and me, Q,

The One can be a bit overbearing at times, not to

mention utterly humorless, but you have to admit

that He puts His All into His Work."

    '7 spied a lush morsel on a banquet so vast," he

chanted in his customary singsong fashion,

 

"That I wanted my fill as 'twere my last,

Among this spread that was all I couM wish,

Never before had I seen such a dish,

Oh, never before had I seen such a dish."

 

    The length and breadth of the Tkon Empire was

spread out between them like a colossal game

board. At the moment, the planet Wsor occupied

the spotlight of O's attention, which passed through

the spinning globe and projected onto an adjacent

plane of reality a magnified view of the volcanic

devastation currently demolishing the southern

continent, much as a lesser entity might use a

holographic monitor. Rivers of molten lava, ren-

dered several quadrillion times larger than life,

oozed across the intangible screen, casting a crim-

son glow upon O's grinning features as he levitated

above the game board, being careful to keep the

soles of his buckled shoes off the solar system

below. Superimposed upon the magma, like a

ghostly double image, were the stern and unforgiv-

ing features of The One. "Didn't I tell you this only

got better?" 0 asked.

    "It's certainly dramatic enough, I suppose," Q

answered. He hung upside down on the reverse side

of the board, his knees wrapped around a stretch of

sturdy quantum filaments while his head dangled

only a light-year or so above (or below, depending

on your orientation) the diverse worlds of the

empire. To be honest, he was starting to get dis-

tinctly disgusted, but it struck him as impolite to

say so. O's confederates had been at work for some

time, at least half a century by Tkon standards, and

yet all their games, no matter how creatively con-

ceived, seemed to arrive at the same conclusion:

lots of death and devastation and screaming.

Which had a certain crude shock appeal at first,

granted, until it became unpleasant and monoto-

nous. Frankly, he thought, I'd appreciate a little

comic relief at this point, maybe even a nice roman-

tic interlude. He avoided O's gaze as he let his mind

wander. I wonder what Q is doing right now?

    "About time you thought of me," his sometime

girlfriend and future wife replied indignantly,

flashing onto the scene. She stood just out of reach,

oriented along the same axis as Q, so that he found

himself staring directly into her kneecaps. "I was

starting to wonder if I was going to cross your mind

anytime before the heat death of the universe."

    Q somersaulted off his invisible trapeze, landing

on his feet in front of Q. Arms crossed atop her

chest, she fixed a pair of dubious eyes upon him.

Her auburn tresses fell across her shoulders, less

elegantly coifed than they would be aboard the

Enterprise-E six hundred millennia from now, but

the arch of her eyebrow was no less haughty.

    Despite her forbidding expression and body lan-

guage, Q was glad to see her. Where was the fun of

embarking on a bold new adventure if there was no

one around to show off for? 0 and his pals didn't

count; they were part of the experiment, and too

experienced in this kind of thing to be either

impressed or shocked by Q's role in the proceed-

ings. I need an audience, he decided, and he

couldn't think of anyone better than Q.

    "Well?" she demanded, her face as frozen as

absolute zero.

    Apologies were only embarrassing, he decided.

Better to simply brazen this one out. "Q! Great to

see you! Come to join the fun?"

"Hardly," she said scornfully, shaking her head.

"Say, who have we here?" 0 called out. In a

blink, he joined them on the opposite side of the

game board. The projected scenes of volcanic hav-

oc disappeared from view. "Aren't you going to

introduce me to your fine female friend, Q?"

    "Oh, right," Q muttered, slightly discomfited by

the reality of having to deal with both 0 and Q at

the same time. They each came from completely

different slices of his existence, engaged separate

aspects of his personality. It was like trying to be

two different people at once. "0, this is Q. Q, this is

O. He's not from around here."

    "So I hear," she said icily, regarding the stranger

with all the warmth and affection she might lavish

on a Markoffian sea lizard before turning her back

on him. "I need to talk to you, Q... alone."

    O's face darkened ominously at the female Q's

not terribly subtle snub, reminding Q a little too

much of how he had looked right before he flash-

freezed the Coulalakritous. Then 0 saw Q watching

him, and his expression lightened, assuming a

more amiable mien. "Of course," he agreed read-

ily. "Far be it from me to intrude upon such a

charming young couple. The last thing you two

need is a crusty old chaperon such as myself. If

you'll excuse me, m'dear, I'll be stepping out for a

while." Tipping his head at the female, he opened a

doorway into another continuum, then stepped

halfway through. "Don't be all day, Q," he warned,

lingering for a moment between dimensions. He

east a glance at the expanse of the Tkon Empire as

it waited beneath their feet. "The best is still to

come. Mark my words, you haven't seen anything

yet."

    The doorway closed behind him, disappearing

along with O. I wonder what he has in mincl, Q

thought, intrigued by his new friend's cryptic

promises. More apocalyptic destruction, or some-

thing more interesting? He looked forward to find-

ing out.

    His significant other didn't seem curious at all.

"Finally," she huffed. "I thought he'd never leave."

She surveyed the game board skeptically, as if she

half expected to find O's muddy footprints all over

the unsuspecting empire. "All right, Q, what's this

all about?"

    "Er, what do you think it's all about?" Not the

most brilliant retort he had ever come up with, but

perhaps it might buy him enough time to think of

something more clever. How best to present the

situation to her anyway, and precisely what sort of

reaction did he hope to elicit? It was hard to say,

especially when he had mixed feelings himself

about what The One and his associates were doing

to the Tkon.

    "Don't get coy with me, Q," she warned. "The Q

told me all about the disreputable gypsy vagabonds

you've been hanging around with. Really, Q, I

thought you had better taste than to fraternize with

entities so... parvenu."

 Ordinarily, he found her impeccable snobbish-

ness delightfully high-handed, but not when it was

turned against him. Who was she to pick out his

friends for him, as if he lacked the judgment and

maturity to choose his own company? It was insult-

ing, really. "You don't know anything about

them," he said defensively, "and neither do the Q.

I'll have you know that 0 and the others bring a

fresh new perspective to this part of the multiverse.

I may not agree with everything they're about, but I

would certainly never dismiss their ideas out of

hand simply because they're not part of our own

boring little clique. I have an open mind, unlike

other certain other Qs I might name."

    A pair of ivory opera glasses appeared in her

hand, and she glanced down at the sprawling

interstellar empire beneath them. As she inspected

the goings-on there, she shared what she saw with

Q. A montage of moving images unfurled before

his eyes, all taken from the daily lives of the present

generation of Tkon: battle-weary soldiers crawling

through the trenches of some Q-forsaken tropical

swamp, a hungry child wandering lost amid the

rubble of an obliterated city, angry rioters shouting

through a hastily erected force field at uniformed

troops, priceless manuscripts and ancient tapes-

tries hurled onto a bonfire by chanting zealots, a

spy on trial for her life before a military tribunal,

even an assassination attempt on the life of the

empress.

    "Is this what you call a fresh perspective, a bold

new idea: making life miserable for a tribe of in-

significant bipeds?" She snapped the lorgnette shut

with a flick of her wrist, terminating the pic-

ture show. "It's as tedious as it is tragic. Why don't

you just peel the scales off an Aldebaran serpent

while you're at it? Or pull the membrane off an

amoeba?"

    "At least they're doing something," Q pointed

out, not entirely sure how he ended up defending

O's mysterious agenda, but too irritated to care.

"They take an interest in matters outside the

rarefied atmosphere of your precious Continuum.

True, this sort of hands-on approach can get a bit

messy, but it's no worse than the ghastly foolish-

ness that developing species always inflict on them-

selves anyway. Remember those divers throwing

themselves into the jaws of monsters back on

Tagus? They turned themselves into fish food vol-

untarily, just for the sake of a primitive ritual, so

what's wrong with sacrificing a few million more to

a good end? Their tiny lives are measured in micro-

nano-aeons, after all."

    "Is that so?" she answered. "Who are you trying

to convince, me or yourself7."

    Good question, he thought, although he wasn't

about to admit it. "I don't need to convince you of

anything. I'm perfectly capable of making my own

decisions."

    "Particularly when they're the wrong ones ....

Oh, don't make that face at me. This is more

important than your wounded male ego." Her

expression softened a tad as she tried one more

time to get through to him. "Listen to me, Q. We've

known each other ever since we've been able to

manipulate matter and recite the pledge of omni-

science at the same time. We learned how to parse

the lesser atomic force together. Trust me when I

say that I'm only looking out for your best interests

here. Forget about this 0 character and his low-life

confederates. I promise I won't think any less of

you if you come away with me now."

    "And then what?" Q asked, less heatedly than

before. Although touched by her concern, he wasn't

ready to surrender just because she had started

firing roses instead of ammo. "Am I supposed to

just creep back to the Continuum with my hypo-

thetical tail between my legs, to sit back meekly

with folded hands while the great big universe goes

by?" He struggled to make her understand. "Don't

you see, I can't give up now. This is the first time

I've ever taken a risk, done something with my

immortality. I'm not a kid anymore. It's high time

I hold to my guns, stand by my mark, draw a line in

the ether, and all that decisive stuff. Right or

wrong, I have to see this through to the end, no

matter what. It's the only way I'll ever find out who

I really am."

    "But this isn't about you," she protested. "It's

about 0 and his crazy games. He's just using you."

    "Maybe so," Q agreed, "but he can't take advan-

tage of me without my cooperation. That's my

choice to make, so, you see, it really does come

back to me."

 

    She sighed and shook her head sadly. "If you

don't know who you truly are, then you're the only

intelligence in the Continuum who doesn't. You're

stubborn and unpredictable, Q. A volatile catalyst

in the never-ending chemical reaction that is cre-

ation, the spice in the primordial soup. You have

all the verve and vitality of the cosmos and not one

iota of common sense." She dropped her opera

glasses into the glowing red sun at the center of the

Tkon Empire and watched as they bubbled and

melted away. "And I suppose that's why I'm never

going to be able to convince you to do the sane and

rational thing and listen to me for once."

    "No," Q confirmed, "although you wouldn't be

you if you didn't keep trying now and then."

Beyond that, he wasn't sure how to respond to her

spontaneous description of him. I kind of like that

bit about the spice, he thought, more than a little

flattered, although I could have done without the

commentary on my common sense, or lack thereof.

"Thanks a lot, I guess."

    "Good-bye, Q," she said before transporting

away. "Don't say I didn't warn you."

    Why should I, he reflected, when I know you71

always be there to remind me?

 

    Young Q gazed ruefully at the empty space that

his highly significant other had occupied only milli-

seconds before, seemingly saddened by her depar-

ture. Theirs had been a bittersweet parting, at best.

"Just wait," he promised the starry blackness be-

side him. "We'll look back at this and laugh some-

day."

    "Not to worry, lad," a bombastic voice assured

him. 0 materialized in the space the female had

vacated. He looked much happier now that the

distaff Q was gone. "She'll come around eventu-

ally, see if she doesn't." He threw back his head

and chuckled heartily. "Women! They're the same

in every reality. Why, the stories I could tell you!"

He gave Q a solid punch in the shoulder that sent

him stumbling sideways. "But I don't need to teach

a strapping young rooster like you about the fairer

sex, do I? I imagine you've got a girl in every solar

system or my name isn't 0!"

    Several meters away, unseen and unheard by

either participant in this one-sided discussion,

Jean-Luc Picard groaned aloud. "I can't believe

you actually fell for all this phony masculine cama-

raderie," he told the Q standing beside him.

    "Cut me some slack, mon capitaine," he said. "I

was barely seven billion years old. What did I know

about the ways of extra-dimensional executioners?"

"Executioner?"

    "Just watch the show, Jean-Luc," Q advised

sourly, "before I regret bringing you here in the

first place."

 

 

 

 

Chapter Twelve

 

LEM FAnL FELT u~ AN OLLAFISH fighting its way

upstream. As he staggered down the seemingly

endless corridors of the Enterprise in search of

Engineering, pockets of uniformed crew members

kept streaming past him on the way to sickbay,

getting in his way. Idiots, he cursed. Didn't they

realize he had more important things to do than let

them pass by in their pointless attempts to preserve

their own insignificant existences? Immortality

was within his grasp, but these blinkered Starfleet

buffoons were doing their best to obstruct him,

especially that pigheaded fool Commander Riker.

    Wheezing painfully, he slowed long enough to

brace himself against a sturdy duranium wall. He

could feel the constant hum of the Calamarain

vibrate through the metal. His lungs felt like they

were wrapped in barbed wire, and the corridor

seemed to swim before his bloodshot eyes. He

reached for his hypospray, then remembered that

he had emptied its contents into Counselor Troi,

feeling a flicker of guilt at having treated a fellow

Betazoid so badly. I had no choice, he rebuked his

conscience. They were going to put me in stasis,

shut down my brain just when I need it most. There

was nothing else I couM do. I had to get away.

    The barrier was all that mattered, and the voice

in his mind beckoning to him from beyond the

great wall. That voice had promised him life, plus

knowledge and power beyond mortal understand-

ing. Come soon, the voice whispered even now.

Soon, sooner, soonest. Soon, come soon. Closer to

me, closer to you, closer...

    All he had to do was create the wormhole, break

through the barrier to the other side. Then he

would be saved, would be spared from his own

terrifying mortality. He would never stop, never

cease to be, as Shozana had when she had disap-

peared before his very eyes.

    Your eyes are my eyes are yours. View you, view

I...

    He closed his eyes, seeking relief in the darkness

for just a second. Odd... he could barely remem-

ber his wife's face now; all he could see was the

column of energized atoms she had become when

the transporter malfunctioned. I shall become pure

energy, too, he thought, but in a different, more

transcendent way.

 

 

 

  "Sir, are you all right? Can I help you?"

  Coming closer, closer coming, closer...

    He opened his eyes and saw the concerned face

of a minor Starfleet officer, a Benzite from the

looks of him. Puffs of essential gases escaped from

the respiratory device positioned beneath his nos-

trils. Faal noted a large orange bruise upon his

bluish green forehead. "What?" the scientist asked.

He could barely hear the officer's words over the

voice calling out to him, growing stronger and

louder the nearer they came to the barrier.

    The wail divides us, the wall is nigh... deny the

wall, and hopes are high... heigh, heigh, heigh/

    The more clearly he heard the voice, the more

enigmatic its words became. It spoke in riddles, as

sacred oracles have always done, but Faal had

deciphered its message from the beginning. Eternal

life and enlightenment waited beyond the galactic

barrier.

    The wall is nigh, the wall deny... heigh, high

hope, heigh.

    "You don't look well, sir," the Benzite said. "I'm

on my way to sickbay." He held a sleeve that was

stained with whatever Benzites used for blood.

Tiny droplets peeled off the torn fabric and floated

in the weightless corridor. "Can I help you there?"

    "No," Faal wheezed. He shook his head, then

regretted it; the motion caused the floor to spin

beneath his feet even faster than before. It took all

his concentration to make his tongue move the way

it had to, say the words the Benzite needed to hear.

"The wall is... I mean, I have to get to engineer-

ing. Mr. La Forge needs me," he lied.

  Closer to the wall, closer to the All...

    The Benzite looked dubious. He assessed Faal's

heaving chest and trembling limbs. "Are you sure,

sir? No offense, but I don't think you're in any

shape to assist anyone."

    Why won't he leave me alone? Faal thought

desperately. Every moment he was kept away from

his goal was a torture. Closing on the wall, or is the

wail closing on you, closing the door... ? He

wanted to hurl the overly solicitous officer away,

consign him to oblivion, but instead he had to

waste precious moments allaying the concerns of

this nonentity. Close, closing, closer... "I'm all

right," Faal assured him, forcing himself to smile

reassuringly. "I'm not injured, just a little clo-

ser... that is, just a little ill. It must be the

weightlessness."

    "Oh, right." The Benzite nodded his head. "I

wouldn't know. Benzites don't get nauseous."

    "You're very fortunate, then," Faal gasped.

Come closer to me closer to you, soon, sooner,

soonest. "But I'll be close... fine... if I can just

make it to a turbolift."

    "We're at red alert, sir," the Benzite pointed out

helpfully. "The turbolifts are only for emergency

USe."

    "This is an emergency, you dolt!" He couldn't

hide his impatience any longer. The ship was

approaching the wormhole. He had to get to engi-

neering, launch the torpedo containing the magne-

ton generator, force La Forge to initiate the

subspace matrix, create the artificial wormhole,

liberate the voice .... There was so much to do in

so little time, and this blue-skinned, gas-snit/ing

cretin would simply not let him be. "The voice is

calling me. I have to go!"

Soon, sooner. Come to the wall, come soon...

Lurching forward, away from the duranium

bulkhead, he grabbed the Benzite's wounded arm

and shoved it roughly. The crewman's blood felt

slick and greasy against his palm, but the Benzite

emitted an inarticulate croak and crouched over in

pain, gasping so hard that the fumes wafting from

his respirator dissipated before reaching his nos-

trils. Serves you right, Faal thought vindictively.

    More Starfleet personnel came around the corner

ahead, a man and two women, in scorched gray

uniforms. Faal breathed a sigh of relief that they

had not arrived in time to see him accost the

Benzite. "He's hurt badly," he blurted hastily,

pointing back at the breathless Benzite. "Hurry.

Please help him." He pushed his way past them,

urging them onward, then hurried around the

corner until they were out of sight. Hurry, hurry,

hurry... come soon come. If fortune was with

him, the Benzite wouldn't be able to speak clearly

for a few more moments, giving him time to get

away.

 

    The time is nigh, the wall is high, defy the nigh

high wall... try.t

    The barbed wire tore at his lungs with every

breath and his heart was pounding alarmingly, but

he refused to let his debilitated physical state slow

him down. He was more than this decaying shell of

crude flesh and bone. His mind could overrule the

limitations of his treacherous body and soon would

be able to do far more than that. I'm coming, his

mind called to the voice beyond the way, the voice

that had summoned him all the way from Betazed,

enticed him away from his children and his death-

bed. Do not forsake me. I will bring down the wall. I

will, I swear it.

 Closer to the wall, closer... closer...

    He was tempted to shed the cumbersome gravity

boots and simply soar down the hall, but, more

realistically, he feared losing control of his momen-

tum, at worst ending up becalmed in the air out of

reach of any convenient wall or ceiling. What did

he know about maneuvering in zero-G? He was a

scientist, not an athlete. No, it was safer just to

walk on his own two feet, no matter how weary

they were.

 Feel you closer, closer you feel me closer...

    A turbolift entrance beckoned to him from the

end of the corridor. Shallow breaths whistling from

his diseased lungs, he propelled himself down the

last few meters until his hands smacked against the

sliding metal doors--which refused to open. "Let

me in!" he demanded, pounding on the doors with

his fists. The blood of the Benzite left a sticky stain

on the painted surface of the door.

    A dismayingly calm voice, which he had come to

know as the ship's computer's, responded promptly,

"The turbolifts are not currently available to unau-

thorized personnel. Civilian passengers should re-

port to either sickbay or their quarters."

    He let out a moan of despair. It was just as the

Benzite had foretold. Intellectually, he understood

the reasoning: Starfleet didn't want people to be-

come trapped in the turbolifts while the ship was

under attack. But what did that matter when his

very future was at stake? It was all the Calama-

rain's fault, he realized. You shouM have warned me

about them, he accused the voice.

    Smoke, it answered obscurely. Nothing but

smoke to choke and choke.

    Faal didn't understand. If not for the lack of

gravity, he would have slumped to the floor. In-

stead he let his magnetic boots anchor him to the

floor as his exhausted frame swayed from left to

right. He listened to the thunder of the Calamarain

booming against the ship, and cursed the day he

ever heard the name Enterprise. He would sooner

have stayed on Betazeal, helpless and dying, than

endure the infinite frustration of coming so close to

salvation, only to be stopped in his tracks by a

balky turbolift.

 No smoke in the wall, none at all, none at all...

 

     Then, as the voice foretold, the thunder fell

 silent. The metal doors beneath his palm ceased to

 vibrate in unison with the alien hum. The Cala-

 marain, he realized instantly, they're gone. Which

 meant, he deduced almost as quickly, that the

Enterprise must have just entered the barrier.

  Into the wall, closer to the All...

    A sense of awe, mixed with dread and anticipa-

tion, passed through him only a heartbeat before

his entire body was jolted by an intense psychic

shock that raced through his nervous system, elec-

trifying him. His spine and limbs stiflened, his

arms stretched out at his sides. Tiny traceries of

white energy linked his splayed fingers like web-

bing. His muscles jerked spasmodically and his

eyes glowed with silver fire. Although no one was

around to see it, the scientist flickered in and out of

reality, transforming into a photonegative version

of himself and back again. The pain in his lungs,

the aching exhaustion in his joints vanished at

once, driven out of his awareness by the supernat-

ural vitality coursing through his body. It's the

power of the barrier, he realized, filling me, trans-

forming me.

    But more than just mindless energy was pouring

into his brain, expanding his mind. He sensed a

personality as well, or at a least a fragment of one,

the same personality that had called to him for so

long, promised him so much. Yes... feelyou closer,

so close so closer... yes. The voice brushed his

soul, like the delicate touch of a spider's leg, and

another identity, older and vastly more powerful,

met and melded with his own. For one brief

millisecond, Faal's self reeled with fear, protective

of his unique individuality, but then it was sub-

merged beneath the alien memories and sensations

that seemed inextricable from the power he now

possessed, the voice that was possessing him. You

are I are you, view I, view you...

    The face of that strange, meddling entity, Q,

appeared in his memory, now bringing with it a

sense of anger, of long-simmering hatred, that he

had not previously known. Q~ cursed Q, treacherous

Q. . . what will we do, to Q and Q and Q. . . ?

    Frantic to hang on to some trace of what he was,

Faal tried again to visualize his wife's face, but

instead all he could see was that other Q, the

female one with the astounding child, the child of

the Q. The power of the barrier, and the voice

beyond, flooded his synapses, setting off a cascade

of memories that the power seemed to sort through

at will, picking and choosing according to its own

unfathomable agenda. Yes, yes, he thought, no

longer capable of distinguishing his own desires

from those of the voice, the chiM is the future, the

child is our future, in the future the child....

    Unable to cope any further with the forces at

work within, Faal blacked out, his sagging limbs

floating limply above the floor while dreams of

apotheosis brought themselves to life.

  Close, so close....

 

    Where is he? Milo wondered. He was lost and

couldn't find his father anywhere. He had tried to

take a turbolift, hoping to catch up with his dad at

Engineering, only to discover that they had all shut

down during the emergency. In theory, that meant

his father was stuck on this level, too, but this ship

was so huge, with so many corridors and intersec-

tions to choose from. To be honest, Milo wasn't

sure he could find his way back to sickbay if he

tried. Dad! he called out with his mind. Come back/

    He couldn't sense his father's thoughts any-

where, no matter how hard he concentrated. It was

like his father had cut himself off completely from

the rest of the world, or at least from his son. I don't

even know who he is anymore, Milo thought. The

father he knew, the one he remembered from

before, never would have attacked the counselor

like that.

    Milo stomped down another hallway, feeling

clumsy in his oversized magnetic boots. Maybe he

shouM try to find sickbay; Dr. Crusher and Coun-

selor Troi had been very insistent about using the

cortical stimulator on him before the ship entered

the galactic barrier. Thank the Sacred Chalice that

Kinya was safe at least, even if he and Father were

in danger. His throat tightening, he wondered who

would take care of her if... something hap-

pened... to his father and him. Aunt Mwarana

wouM take care of her, I guess.

    A crew member, rushing down the corridor

toward him, spotted Milo and slowed to a stop.

"Hello?" she said. "What are you doing wandering

around at a time like this?"

    "Urn, I'm looking for my father," he mumbled.

How could he begin to explain how crazy his father

had become, what he had done to poor Counselor

Troi? "I think he was going to Engineering, but I'm

not sure if he got there."

    The woman hesitated, chewing on her bottom

lip, torn between her own urgent errand and the

plight of the boy. He could sense her indecision

and concern. She reached a decision quickly,

though, just like a Starfleet officer. "My name is

Sonya Gomez, and I was on my way back to

Engineering from sickbay anyway." Milo noticed a

foam cast around her left wrist and sensed some

residual soreness from the injury. "Why don't you

come along with me and we'll see if your father is

there? If not, I'm sure we can spare someone to see

you back to your quarters."

    "Okay," Milo said. He sure couldn't think of a

better plan. Gomez held out her hand, and Milo

accepted it gratefully. She began to lead them down

the corridor in the same direction he had just come

when she suddenly stopped and cocked her head. A

quizzical expression came over her face. Milo felt a

surge of optimism within her heart.

    "Hey, listen to that," she said. "The thunder's

stopped."

    She’s right, Milo thought. He would have said so,

except for the blazing fire that ignited inside his

skull. His small frame convulsed unexpectedly, like

 

he was being electrocuted. He heard Sonya Gomez

shouting in alarm from somewhere very far away.

She shook his shoulders, but he couldn't feel it, not

like he could feel the fire as it poured from his brain

into the rest of his body, causing his entire body to

tingle and twitch.

    His eyes rolled upward and he lost conscious-

ness, but instead of falling into blackness, all he

found waiting for him was a brilliant purple light.

 

 

 

Chapter Thirteen

 

GLEVl UT Sov, DOWAGER EMPRESS OF TKON, awoke

early one morning during the dawning of the Age of

Makto, in the eightieth year of her reign, troubled

by the shadows of unremembered dreams. She no

longer slept as well as she once had. A symptom of

her advanced age, she wondered, or of the increas-

ing precariousness of the times? Her reign had been

a turbulent one, marked by civil war and catastro-

phe, although she remained steadfast in her convic-

tion that the Great Endeavor was worth any

sacrifice she and the empire had endured. Only my

conscience does not plague me, she thought.

    Unlike her decrepit body, her private chambers

had changed little over the decades. Skilled arti-

sans had successfully concealed any evidence of the

damage inflicted by the earthquake of seven years

 ago, or by the bomb that had failed to assassinate

 her only a few months before. She permitted her-

 self a defiant smile; sometimes her stubborn ability

 to survive impressed even her. They'll not get rid of

 me that easily, she vowed, not for the first time.

     She kneaded her weary eyes with skeletal knuck-

 les, wishing she could clear her mind as readily.

 What had that dream been about anyway? The

 memory lurked at the back of her awareness, just

 beyond her reach, but the feeling remained, a sense

 of alarm mixed with inspiration, as if she had

 finally isolated the root cause of all that disturbed

 her suffering empire. There was a root cause, of

 that much she felt certain; over the last several

 decades, as she had assiduously studied reports

 from all over the empire, she had grown convinced

 that there was a reason for the numerous, often

 seemingly unrelated adversities that had rocked the

 foundations of their society for all these many

 years, a reason that sometimes seemed to lurk just

 beyond the awareness of her consciousness. Per-

 haps this latest dream held the key to an answer she

 already knew deep within her soul.

    She knew better than to chase the memory,

however. Dreams were like fish: The harder you

tried to hold on to them, the more slippery they

seemed to be. If it was important, it would come

back to her in time. After all, she wasn't planning

to die right away, at least not today.

    Doing her best to ignore the creaking noises that,

perversely, her hearing remained keen enough to

detect, she carefully lowered her feet into the well

worn slippers on the floor. Despite the incessant

appeals of her attendants, she still refused to let

anyone help her aged bones rise. As long as she

could stand, however shakily, on her own two feet,

so, she was convinced, would the empire. It was a

silly superstition, but she held to it nonetheless.

    The chambers lighted slowly, as was her prefer-

ence these days. She took a moment to steady

herself, then reached out and grasped the sturdy

walking stick propped against the wall by her

couch. A polished quartz rendition of the Endless

Flame emblem topped the stick. Her shadow, now

much thinner than she might like, waited patiently

for her to begin their daily trek to her venerable

desk. With a sigh, she obliged the shadow by

putting one foot before the other. The soles of her

slippers squeaked as she shuffled across the floor.

    As ever, the outer rooms felt too cold for com-

fort, so she gave the chamber a mental command to

increase the temperature by at least ten grades.

That she could effect such a change merely by

thinking it still amazed her; out of habit, she often

spoke aloud to her palace, much to the whispered

amusement of the younger members of her court.

    A finger unconsciously stroked the base of her

skull where, beneath her snow-white hair and deli-

cate skin, her personal psi-transmitter had been

implanted. All her physicians and technologists

swore to her that she couldn't possibly feel any-

thing from the implant. You won't even know it's

there, all the brilliant young geniuses insisted;

everybody has one these days. No doubt they knew

what they were talking about, but she was positive

she felt an itching at the back of neck sometimes,

not to mention a faint buzzing in her ears. Maybe

I'm just imagining it, she thought, just like I

imagined whatever I dreamed last night.

    Placing her stick against the side of the desk, she

sat down in her chair, grateful for the extra heat

that was already flooding the chamber. She sup-

posed she could just keep the heat going continu-

ously, so that the chambers would always be warm

right from the start, but that struck her as extrava-

gantly wasteful, especially during wartime. Given

all the sacrifices she had demanded of her people

over the years, all the resources poured into the

Great Endeavor despite every crisis that had

threatened to derail it, the least she could do was

cope with a bit of chill upon waking, especially

when she suspected that a good part of the cold was

simply her aging metabolism taking its time to

come up to speed each morn.

    She directed a thought at the freshly restored

wall across from her and the city presented itself to

her once more, lifting her spirits. Ozari-thul still

rose proudly beneath the ruddy glow of dawn.

True, many towers were under repair while wary

imperial fliers patrolled the skies above them, but

the heart of Tkon still beat as soundly as her own,

the people going about their business even in the

face of terrorism and sabotage, The scarlet sun

confessed its mortality every day, yet the time was

swiftly approaching when the slow death of that

ancient orb would no longer endanger the worlds

and people now within its radiance. I cannot betray

their confidence in me, she thought. The Great

Endeavor must be completed.

    A twinge of hunger interrupted her musings and,

in response, her breakfast appeared atop the desk.

The biscuits and jam were tempting, and to blazes

with what her doctors said about the honey, but she

pushed the tray aside for the moment. Something,

perhaps the lingering influence of that elusive

dream, compelled her to check on her empire first.

    Gazing down upon the tinted crystal disk, newly

replaced after the bombing, she retrieved the latest

bulletins. As usual, it made for depressing reading.

New fighting along the intermediate orbits. Two

more ships lost and a nebular mining station fallen

to the rebels. Demonstrations and work stoppages

throughout the inner worlds, even rumors that the

governor of Wsor was secretly trying to negotiate a

separate peace with Rzom in exchange for neutrali-

ty in the war. A devastating jungle fire on the

fourth moon. Mass suicides among the commerce

artists. A blight on this season's crop of tamazi,

plus an outbreak of melting fever in the provinces

of Closono-thul. Intelligence reports on a new

millennial cult calling for the preordained destruc-

tion of Tkon. Flooding along the canals on Dupuc.

A massacre on the second moon of a planet she had

never heard of before.

 

    On and on it went. Disasters. Combat. Epidem-

ics. Accidents. Atrocities. Raids. Carnage. Fatali-

ties. Revolts. Armed incursions... bad news from

every corner of the empire, loyal or otherwise. The

only consolation was that the rebels seemed to be

hurting just as much, which was cold comfort

indeed; despite close to a generation of internecine

conflict, she still thought of the outer planets as

under her protection, even if she had to fight to

save them from themselves. The war itself had

turned into one long, bloody stalemate in which

neither side could gain any lasting advantage over

the other. Was that the fault of her generals, she

wondered, or were there other factors at work?

    A piece of her dream flashed across her con-

sciousness, almost too quickly to identify. Some-

thing about a captive beast... and spears? She

reached for it, but it slipped away as quickly as it

came. Patience, she counseled herself. Let it come

at its own speed. She had learned to trust her

dreams over the course of her lifetime, much as her

visionary ancestors must have. Don't force it. Wait.

    The image felt oddly familiar, though, as if she

had dreamed it before, perhaps many times be-

fore, without ever remembering it. Until now, she

thought, to some degree.

    Turning her attention away from ephemeral frag-

ments of the night before, she lifted a biscuit,

generously drenched in honey, to her lips, then put

it down again. "Too late," she sighed. The endless

litany of dire news reports had killed her appetite.

 

    She stared again into the disk, looking for some

sign of a pattern, of a common thread linking all

the disparate hardships tormenting her people.

There was a link, she suddenly felt convinced. Her

dream had told her so, even if she couldn't yet

recall how it went. Perhaps the answer lay, she

thought, in those other reports, the ones that didn't

appear to make sense at all, that hinted in fact at

the supernatural.

    These strange, unexplainable incidents had been

part of the bulletins for years, although often

hidden in the margins or between the lines. Usually

described as "apocryphal" or "unconfirmed," they

had remained eerily consistent over the decades:

accounts of dead soldiers rising up to fight again, of

carefully maintained technology failing without

cause, of storms and hurricanes birthed without

warning out of clear skies and tranquil seas, of all

manner of impossible occurrences taking place

despite every precept of logic and science, just like

that rain of vovelles that had fallen upon the city so

many years ago, when she was barely more than a

child. I haven't thought of that for ages, but I

suppose that's when it all started to go wrong. A

vision of swollen, overripe spheres of fruit pelting

themselves against her windowpane, making wet,

smacking noises while their juices ran like rivulets

of blood down the transparent glass, surfaced from

the dusty recesses of her memory. It's almost as if

some higher power were playing with us, testing

us...,

 

    At once, her dream came back to her, more vivid

than before. She saw a great horned animal at bay,

its hooves pawing the ground, its curved ivory

horns stabbing the air above its massive head. Its

fur was dark and matted, except for a white patch

upon its brow in the shape of a flame. Three

masked figures, and two more farther back in the

shadows, had the beast cornered, prodding it with

long sharp sticks that drew blood wherever they

pierced the animal's shaggy hide, but never enough

to inflict serious injury on the beast. The wounds

were like pinpricks, intended not to kill but only to

torture and enrage. Maddened, the poor creature

frothed at the mouth and blew steam from its

snout, roaring its helpless fury even as the bloody

spears came at it again and again.

    Then, finally, when the beast could offer no

further resistance, the masked tormentors laid

down their spears and stepped aside, making way

for the fourth figure to advance toward the van-

quished animal, a shining silver blade resting in his

grip. This fourth figure, to whom the others seemed

to defer, wore no mask, but she could not discern

his features no matter how hard she tried. All she

could see was the light reflecting off the burnished

sheen of the blade as he raised it high above the

beast's drooping head. The fifth figure came for-

ward finally, reaching out as if to stop the bearer of

the sword, but he had waited too long. There was

no more time, and the blade came sharply down--

The empress came back to her chambers with a

start, one hand jerking forward and knocking the

breakfast tray over the edge of the desk. Crystalline

plates and teacup crashed onto the carpet, splinter-

ing into dozens of tiny shards and soiling the

Taguan carpet with a mixture of tea, crumbs, and

honey. She gave the mess only an instant's thought,

disintegrating the broken meal and transferring it

away, before clearing the disk and contacting her

new first minister. The head and shoulders of a

middle-aged Tkon came into focus. He looks more

like his father every day, the empress thought,

recalling another trusted first minister from many

years ago. "Most Elevated," he addressed her. "I'm

delighted to hear from you. I have excellent news

regarding the Great Endeavor. I believe we may be

ready to commence the solar transference in a

matter of weeks."

    His words cheered her spirits, momentarily dis-

pelling the pall cast by her premonitions. Never

mind the dark wonders alluded to in the reports,

the true miracle was that the Great Endeavor had

proceeded toward completion despite all the ca-

lamities of the last seventy-odd years. It had re-

quired constant pressure from the throne to keep

the massive project on track, but perhaps soon her

persistence would be rewarded and the empire

preserved. I will die happy, she thought, even if we

can accomplish no more than that.

    She could not allow such hopeful musings, how-

ever, to distract her from her current purpose.

"Those are fine tidings indeed," she told him, "but

let us speak of another matter. I want you to

arrange an imperial address to be sent out simulta-

neously across the entire empire, including those

regions currently in revolt. I assume we have the

capacity to transmit my words into even Rzom and

the other outer planets?"

    Fendor arOx looked uncomfortable. "Well, yes,

actually, although we've taken pains not to let the

rebels know that we still had the means to do so. It's

a hidden advantage we've been holding in reserve."

    "A wise decision," she assured him. He~ as

prudent as his father, too. "But the time has come

to employ that advantage. I wish to speak to my

fellow Tkon, all of them. And as soon as possible."

The memory of her dream, of that spectral blade

slashing down, chilled her in a way no heated

chamber could hope to overcome. She knew now

that this very nightmare had been haunting her

sleeping hours for more years than she cared to

estimate, only now escaping into the clear light of

day. "I feel very strongly that the future of the

empire is at stake."

 

    "By Q, I think she's got it," Q rejoiced, encour-

aged by what he saw transpiring in a private

chamber in the imperial palace on the homeworld

of the empire. He felt certain that the Tkon, as

embodied by their elderly empress, were rising to

the challenge posed by O's colleagues. "I have to

admit, I was getting a bit nervous there," he

informed 0, "but it looks like they're going to pass

our test after all, and with flying colors no less." He

smiled paternally, pleased with himself for having

the selected the Tkon in the first place. "I always

knew they had it in them."

    0 frowned, looking curiously dissatisfied with the

hopeful omens so prized by the younger entity.

"We'll see about that," he muttered.

 

    "My friends and neighbors," the empress began,

"I speak to you today not as a ruler to her subjects,

nor as a conqueror to her foes, but as one mortal

being to another."

    Eschewing the grandeur of her illuminated

throne, she sat behind her old wooden desk, clad in

a simple but elegant white robe. With what she

prayed was unmistakable symbolism, she lifted her

saxdonyx scepter before her, crowned by the sacred

emblem of the Endless Flame, and deliberately

placed it aside. Her well-lined face, serene in its

composure, faced the glowing crystal screen that

the first minister assured her would transit her

voice and image to every planet, moon, null sta-

tion, and vessel that had ever sheltered the far-

flung children of Tkon.

    "I have put the trappings of power and authority

away because the issue that faces us now is far

greater than any political differences, no matter

how serious or legitimate. Believe me when I tell

you that I have come to the astounding but certain

conclusion that our entire species is being tested by

awesomely powerful alien beings crueler and more

merciless than any god or demon imagined by our

common ancestors. No other explanation can ac-

count for the ceaseless array of troubles, both

natural and preternatural, that have we have all

been subjected to for as long as a generation."

    She paused to give her listeners time to absorb all

she had told them, growing all the more convinced

that she was doing the right thing. Now that she

was finally giving voice to the nameless fears that

had haunted her dreams, she felt that the tide was

turning in her favor at last. Recognizing their true

enemy, the secret genesis of all their woes, was the

essential first step toward restoring the safety and

happiness the empire had once provided to all its

citizens, great and small.

    "A startling proposition? That it is, yet I am

confident that if you will examine our recent histo-

ry with this understanding in mind, you will realize

I speak the truth. We have all been provoked and

tormented almost beyond the level of endurance,

and must now rise above these hardships to prove

that the better part of our natures, that which truly

makes us a people, can withstand any test and

emerge triumphant in the end, deserving of and

ready for an even more glorious future."

    So far, so good, she thought, buoyed by the

conviction and sincerity behind everything she had

shared with her people. Now came the tricky part,

as she moved from abstract generalities to tangible

reality. She took a deep breath, praying that minds

throughout the empire would not slam shut when

they heard what she said next.

    "I do not think it was a coincidence that this

testing came upon us at the same time that the sun

which has brought warmth and light to our worlds

now nears its end. Was there ever a time when our

people faced a greater challenge, a more elemental

test of our worthiness to grow and go on?" Placing

her hands beneath the surface of her desk, she

cupped her fingers in a traditional solicitation of

good fortune. "Many of you have opposed the

Great Endeavor, questioned its practicality and

expense. I respect your opinions on this subject,

and admire the courage and determination with

which you have defended your beliefs. But I say to

you now that the time for fighting is over. For

better or for worse, all preparations for the Great

Endeavor have been completed. The work has been

done, the riches have been spent, the time and

trouble have become a fixed part of our history; all

that remains is to reap the rewards of decades of

striving.

    "This, I believe, is the ultimate test of our species

and our sanity. Let us not permit the hostilities

that have divided us to blind us to opportunity

before us. Whether or not you have opposed the

Great Endeavor, surely there is no reason we

should hesitate to spare our solar system from the

sun's inevitable expansion now that we have the

means to do so. A new sun, brought here to replace

our dying star, can only benefit us all."

    She leaned forward, placing the hopes of a life-

time into her voice. "I now call for an immediate

cessation of all hostilities throughout both the

Tkon Empire and the Rzom Alliance. As proof of

my sincerity, I vow in the name of Ozari to

abdicate my throne and grant independence to

each of the outer worlds upon the successful com-

pletion of the Great Endeavor." There, she

thought. I said it. She could just imagine Fendor

and the rest of her ministers gasping in surprise. I

hope their hearts will survive the shock.

    "Now is our moment, our one great chance to

put the conflicts and tragedies of the past behind us

and prove to whatever beings have engineered our

misfortunes that the children of Tkon cannot be

defeated. I ask you all, as one who wants only the

best for friend and foe alike, to consider my words

and look deeply into your souls for all that is wise

and caring, for, as surely as our sun is fading but

our people shall endure, they are watching us."

 

 

 

Chapter Fourteen

 

"I MUST SAY, YOU'VE LASTED LONGER than I expected

you to."

    Preceded by a flash of white light that briefly

dispelled the shadows from the dimly lit bridge, the

female Q materialized in Deanna's accustomed

seat. Baby q was draped over her shoulder as she

gently patted his back.

    As if I didn't already have a headache, Riker

thought, repressing a temptation to groan. "Can I

help you?" he said harshly, hoping that she'd take a

hint and leave, but knowing in his heart that the

universe couldn't be that generous.

    Q ignored the sarcasm, not to mention Riker's

hostile glare. "Yes. Hold on to q... carefully, of

course." Without waiting for Riker's consent, she

lifted the infant off her shoulder and handed him to

Riker, who held the baby at arm's length, uncertain

what to do about him. Even with the gravity off

line, it went against his instincts to simply let go of

the seemingly fragile youngster. "That's better,"

she said, taking a moment to stand up and adjust

her ersatz Starfleet uniform. "Even the most de-

voted of mothers, which I am, needs a break every

now and then."

    I do not have time for this, Riker thought, as q,

unhappy with his new location, began to squirm in

the first officer's grip. The Enterprise remained

becalmed within the uncertain shelter of the galac-

tic barrier, hiding out from the Calamarain, while

Geordi and his crew raced against time to get the

warp engines repaired before their psionically am-

plified shields failed. Or before the psychic energy

of the barrier, despite the shields, started frying

their brains more than it already had. "The Enter-

prise is not a daycare center," he said indignantly,

rising to his feet and thrusting the baby back at his

mother, who gave him a dirty look before she

accepted the child. To his relief, q quieted as he

nestled back into his mother's arms; the last thing

Riker needed was an omnipotent temper tantrum.

"Why are you here and what do you want?" he

demanded of the female Q.

    "You needn't be so ill-mannered," she said huff-

ily. Riker noticed that, despite the conspicuous

absence of anything resembling gravity boots upon

the woman's feet, she had no difficulty navigating

within the weightless environment. Data observed

her with curiosity, Lieutenant Leyoro glowered,

and Barclay gulped, while the remainder of the

bridge crew took pains to get out of her way as she

strolled effortlessly, casually inspecting the charred

remains of the mission ops monitor station and

ducking her head to avoid a floating piece of torn

polyduranide sheeting. "My, you have managed to

make a mess of things, haven't you?"

    "Sir?" Leyoro asked. She patted the phaser on

her hip as she eyed the intruder; she no doubt

realized that firing on the female Q would be a

futile effort, but felt compelled by duty to make the

offer. Riker shook his head, noticing again how

tense and under strain Leyoro looked. Her face was

pale, her jaw clenched tightly shut. Her free hand

held on to the tactical platform so tightly that her

knuckles were as white as her face. Her left eye

twitched periodically. More than the rest of them,

she seemed to be suffering from the telepathic flux

of the barrier. Too bad the Angosian doctors who

revved up her nervous system, he thought, never

considered the long-term consequences of their tin-

kering.

    "Stand down, Lieutenant," he told her, "and

report to sickbay." He hoped Doctor Crusher

could do something for her, even if it meant

putting her into a coma like Deanna.

    "What?" she said, succeeding in sounding in-

credulous despite a slight quaver in her voice.

"Commander, I can't abandon my post at a time

like this."

     "We're not fighting anyone now," he said firmly.

 "This is an engineering crisis. Besides, you're no

 good to me as a casualty." He glanced around the

 bridge for a workable replacement, briefly consid-

 ering Data before deciding that the android was

 more valuable at ops. "Ensign Berglund, take over

 at tactical, and keep an eye on those shields."

     "Yes, sir," the young Canadian woman said,

 stepping away from the auxiliary engineering sta-

 tion. Riker recalled that she had held her own

 during that phaser battle on Erigone VI. Leyoro let

 Berglurid take tactical, but lingered nearby, looking

 like she might want to argue the point with Riker.

 He hoped she wouldn't.

    "Do you always reshuffie your subordinates like

this?" the female Q asked, completing her circuit of

the bridge and returning to the command area. "Or

are you simply taking advantage of the captain's

absence to put your own stamp on things?"

    Riker refused to be baited. "Why have you come

back?" he asked.

    "Dear little q was getting bored waiting for his

father to return from his errand with your Captain

Picard," she explained, "and matters didn't seem

quite as... tumultuous... as before."

    In other words, Riker thought, we're more likely

to drop dead quietly, thanks to the psychic radiation

from the barrier, than be blown to bloody pieces by

the Calamarain. Apparently the former was more

appropriate for family viewing.

  "Besides," she continued, "I admit to some mild

curiosity as to how this little outing of yours will

turn out. Q always said I should take more of an

interest in the affairs of inferior life-forms, and

now that we're a family I want to make a point of

sharing his hobbies."

    Is that all there is to it? Riker scratched his beard,

wondering. Another J~ivolous whim by a typically

irresponsible Q, or is there more to her reappear-

ance, maybe some hidden agenda at work? The

other Q, the usual Q, had been very vocal in his

objections to the idea of the Enterprise having

anything to do with the galactic barrier, in fact, it

had been Captain Picard's determination to carry

out Lem Faal's experiment that had apparently

provoked Q to abduct Picard. Now that the Enter-

prise had actually entered the barrier, perhaps Q's

mate really wanted to keep a closer eye on them.

    She needn't have bothered, he thought. He had

no intention of implementing Professor Faal's

wormhole experiment except as an extremely last

resort; there were too many dangers and unfore-

seen factors involved. His only priority now was to

save their passengers, the crew, and the ship, in

that order. But maybe, it occurred to him, there's

another way to do that.

    "Since you have nothing better to do," he said to

Q, "perhaps you can lend us a hand?"

    "Oh?" she replied, one eyebrow raised skepti-

cally.

    Riker took a deep breath before elaborating

upon his suggestion. To be honest, he felt very

uneasy about dealing with a Q, let alone becoming

indebted to one, but he couldn't ignore the fact that

the capricious entity standing before him, blithely

burping her baby, had the ability to return the

entire ship to the safety of the nearest Starbase--or

anywhere else, for that matter--in less than a

heartbeat. He would be derelict in his duty to the

crew if he didn't at least try to turn that fact to their

advantage.

    "Excuse me, Commander," Data interrupted,

"but you should be aware that I am detecting

pockets of concentrated psionic energy within the

ship. Level twelve of the saucer section."

    "Sickbay?" Riker asked at once. Are Deanna and

the others in danger? He remembered that Faal and

his family had also been sent to sickbay.

    Data consulted his readings. "I do not believe so,

Commander, but nearby."

    "Send a science team to investigate," he in-

structed, then turned back toward the female Q.

Data's report had only increased his resolution to

find a safe way out of the barrier and past the

Calamarain, even if it meant asking a favor of Q's

spouse.

    According to some of the preliminary reports

coming out of the Gamma Quadrant, Voyager had

run into a Q or two; he wondered if Captain

Janeway had ever tried to persuade Q into return-

ing her ship to the Alpha Quadrant, and if so, why

she had failed?

 

    "Look," he said, flashing his most ingratiating

smile, the one that had charmed ladies from one

quadrant to the other, "you and I both know that

this ship is in trouble. We also know that you can

change that in an instant." He watched her expres-

sion carefully, but could discern nothing more than

a certain bemused curiosity on her part. "For old

times' 'sake, and out of respect for this ship's long

friendship with Q"--I can't believe I'm saying this,

he thought--"why don't you relocate the Enter-

prise to a more congenial environment, where we'll

be in a better position to offer you the full hospital-

ity of the ship? I promise you, at the moment

you're not seeing us at our best."

    She smiled mercilessly. "Please don't take of-

fense, Commander, but a mud hut with room

service is not significantly more attractive than a

mud hut without such amenities." She shifted the

baby to her other shoulder as she considered Ri-

ker's proposition. A tiny mouthful of milk or

formula oozed from the child's lips to hang messily

in midair. "Upon reflection, I think I am content to

remain where we are. Do feel free, though, to pilot

your little vessel as you see fit... under your own

power, of course."

    Thanks a lot, he thought sarcastically, not yet

willing to take no for an answer. "Our options are

somewhat limited at present, but why stay here? If

you want to understand Q's interest in humanity,

why not return us to the heart of the Federation?

Or even Earth itself?." A reasonable question, Riker

thought, but their visitor seemed to feel otherwise.

    "I am hardly obliged to justify my decisions to

you," she declared, elevating her chin to a more

aristocratic angle. "My reasons are my own, and

none of your concern."

    Not when they may be the only thing standing

between this crew and obliteration, he mused, un-

swayed by her imperious attitude. The only ques-

tion was, how best to overcome her objections,

whatever they might be? Why would she want to

stay here in the first place?

    A sudden suspicion struck him, flaring to life

through the slow, steady ache that threatened to

muddy his thinking: Could it be that this entire

episode, with the Calamarain and the barrier and

Picard's disappearance, was simply another one of

Q's convoluted "tests," with the female Q in on the

scam? Certainly it wouldn't be the first time that Q

threw them into a life-threatening predicament

without even bothering to explain the rules of the

game.

    Then again, he warned himself, trying to figure

out Q's ultimate motives was a good way to drive

yourself insane. Maybe he had no choice but to

accept the female Q's protests at face value. He

opened his mouth to respectfully but emphatically

press his point when a high-pitched scream of pain

caught him by surprise.

 He spun around as fast as his magnetic boots

would permit to see Baeta Leyoro doubled over,

halfway between the tactical station and the nearest

turbolift, clutching her head in her hands. Only the

total absence of gravity kept her from collapsing to

the floor in a heap.

    Her eyes squeezed shut, her mouth hanging

open, she groaned like she was dying.

 

Interlude

 

SooN. SOONER. NOW.

    Everything was happening at last. Time, which

had been an endless moment for more than an

eternity, was now rushing by like an unchecked

flood, bringing new surprises and changes washing

past him from the other side.

    The smoke had blown away, at least for now, and

the shiny, sliver bug had burrowed into the wall,

like a pest eating away at its persistent, perpetual,

punishing permanence. Not enough to let him back

into the galaxy just yet, not quite, but that long-

awaited hour was getting sooner and closer.

    Close, closer, closest. The wall is high, but the

time is nigh.

    Already a tiny portion of his being, a mere

fragment of his fearless and fathomless fabulous-

ness, had merged with the little voice from the

other side, the voice that now resided within the

silver bug within the wall. He was part of the voice

now, as the voice was part of him, and together

they would tear a hole in the wall large to enough to

let the rest of him, in all his splendor and ingenui-

ty, back into the realm that the Q had denied him.

  Damn you, Q. Damn Q, you.

    Only Q remained unaccounted for. His stench

lingered about the shiny bug, but his essence was

elsewhere. But wherever Q was, Q was up to no

good, for no good ever came from Q, only coward-

ice and betrayal. Good for nothing, that was Q.

    Except, perhaps, for the child. Q was not within

the bug, but his mate was and their spawn. The

voice, that infinitesimal voice from beyond, had

shown him the child, the child of Q. The child was

something different, a merging of Q and Q into

something quite new, something that had not ex-

isted when last he trod that glittering galaxy. The

child was the future.

 And, wait and see, the future belongs to me....

 

Chapter Fifteen

 

THE SMOLDERING RED SUN OF TKON was ready to

move. Surrounding the cooling orb was the largest

matter-transference array ever constructed in the

memory of the universe, a spherical lattice of

sophisticated technology several times greater in

diameter than the star itself, painstakingly con-

structed by the finest minds in the Tkon Empire

over the course of a century. It was a staggering feat

of engineering so immense that it impressed even

Q, especially when he considered that this stun-

ningly audacious project had been conceived of

and executed by mere mortal beings immeasurably

less gifted than either he or 0.

    "Look at that," he crowed, pointing out the

massive structure that surrounded the crimson sun

like a glittering mesh cage. "Can you believe they

actually pulled it off, despite everything that Gor-

gan and the others did to disrupt their little civili-

zation? I don't know about you, but I think they

deserve a round of enthusiastic applause."

    "They haven't done it yet," 0 said darkly. His

heavy brows bunched downward toward the bridge

of his nose as he glowered at the caged sun. His

beefy fists clenched at his sides.

    Funny, Q thought. You'd think he wouM be proud

of how well this test turned out, especially after that

embarrassment with the Coulalakritous. But he was

too elated to fret overmuch over his companion's

unexpectedly sour mood. Perhaps this is simply a

case of post-testing melancholia, perfectly under-

standable under the circumstances. "Oh, but

they're almost finished. The empress even got that

cease-fire she was asking for. See, there's a delega-

tion from Rzom at the palace at this very moment,

on hand to witness the historic event along with

representatives from the entire sector. Even as we

speak, that sparkly gadget of theirs is mapping the

star, absorbing all the facts and figures they'll need

to convert it into data, then beam it to that empty

patch over there." He pointed to a singularly

lifeless section of space beyond the borders of the

empire: a perfect dumping ground for obsolete

stars. "And see," he enthused further, stepping

across the sector, crossing light-years with each

stride before coming to a halt a couple of paces

short of an incandescent yellow sun encased in a

vast transference lattice identical to the one con-

taining Tkon's dying sun, "here's the bright and

shiny new star, good for another five billion years or

so, that they're going to put in the old one's place."

He took a few steps backward to take a longer view,

scratching his jaw contemplatively. "Hmmm. I sup-

pose relocating that star does spoil the aesthetic

design a bit, but I guess I can get used to it."

    He strolled back toward 0, chatting all the way.

"And the timing! Think of it. They're going to have

to beam the new sun into place less than a nanosec-

ond after the old one disappears, just to minimize

the gravitational effects on the whole system. A

pretty tricky operation for a species still mired in

linear time, don't you think?"

    One of these aeons, he decided, I'm going to have

to bring Q back to this moment so she can see it for

herself. And she thought this was going to turn out

badly!

    "Oh, they're cunning little creatures, there's no

question of that," 0 agreed, his eyes fixed on the

caged red fireball around which the Tkon Empire

still orbited, at least for a few more moments.

"Cunning and crafty, in a crude, corporeal kind of

way." A cross between a sneer and a smirk twisted

the comers of his lips. "For all the good it will do

them."

    Q blinked in surprise. "What do you mean by

that?" he asked. "They won, fair and square."

    "Don't be naive, Q," 0 said impatiently. "This

isn't over yet." He clapped his hands together,

producing a metaphysical boom that set cosmic

 strings quivering as far a dozen parsecs away. In

 response, three spectral figures emerged from the

ú celestial game board that was the Tkon Empire.

 They started out as mere specks, almost as infini-

 tesimal as the empress and her peers, but rapidly

 gaining size and substance as they rejoined 0 and Q

 on a higher plane. "My liege," Gotgan addressed 0

 somewhat apologetically, "is it time already? I feel

 there is so much more we could do. In truth, I was

 just warming up."

     "They are a stiff-necked people," The One con-

 firmed, the worlds of the empire reflected in the

 gleaming golden plates of His armor, "slow to

 repent, deeply wed to their infamy."

     (*) said nothing, spinning silently above their

 heads, resembling nothing less than the swollen red

 sun of Tkon. Q wasn't sure, but he thought the

 glowing sphere looked fuller and brighter, more

 sated, than before. Or perhaps it was simply more

 hungry than ever.

     "I was thinking maybe a children's crusade,"

 Gorgan suggested, "starting with the youngest of

 their race .... "

     0 shook his head. "You've done enough, all of

 you, although hardly as much as I might expect."

 Gotgan drew back, dipping his head sheepishly; his

 angelic features seemed to melt beneath the flicker-

 ing light of (*), growing coarser and more lumpish

 in response to O's implied criticism. Even The One

 appeared slightly abashed. The radiant halo fram-

 ing his bearded, patriarchal features dimmed until

it was barely visible. "You've bled the beast," 0

admitted grudgingly. "Now it's time for me to

administer the final stroke."

    He knelt above the fenced-in star, then thrust his

open hand into the very core of the sun, his wrist

passing immaterially through the steel and crystal

framework the Tkon had so laboriously erected

around the star. "Wait!" Q shouted. "What are you

doing?" The young super-being rushed forward,

determined to stop 0 from doing whatever the

older entity had in mind. This isn't fair, he thought.

Not to the Tkon, and not to me.

    0 glanced over his shoulder, undaunted by the

sight of the agitated Q running toward him. "Grab

him," he said brusquely, and Gorgan and The One

obeyed without hesitation. Q felt four hands take

hold of him from behind, pulling his arms back

and pinning them against his spine. His feet kicked

uselessly at the space beneath him, unable to

propel him onward as long as the others main-

tained their grip.

    "Pardon me, boy," Gorgan with exaggerated

politeness. He twisted Q's wrist until the captive

winced in pain. "I'm afraid we can't allow you to

interfere at this particular juncture."

    "That which must be, must be," The One agreed,

holding on tightly to Q's right arm and shoulder.

"Such is it written in the scriptures of the stars."

    "No!" Q yelled. "You have to let me go. I said I'd

be responsible for him. I'm responsible for all of

this!" He tried to free himself by changing his

shape, his personal boundaries blurring as his form

flowed from one configuration to another so

quickly that an observer would have glimpsed only

fleeting impressions of a three-headed serpent,

coiled and twisting, whose triune bodies merged

into that of a salt vampire, wrinkled and hideous,

the suckers on his fingers and toes leeching the

substance from his captors before they withdrew

into the fiat, leathery body of a neural parasite,

flapping toward the empty space overhead, his

stinger lashing at the others even as it became the

ivory horn of a shaggy white mugato, who flexed

his primitive primate muscles against his re-

straints, which resisted even the corrosive hide of a

Horta, capable of boring through the hardest

rock--but not through the metaphysical clutches

of the others.

    "Stop it! Let me go," he shouted, now a poison-

ous scarlet moss, a thorny vine, a drop of liquid

protomatter, a neutron star .... "This isn't what I

wanted." He jumped from tomorrow to yesterday,

backward and forward in time, by a minute, by a

day, by a century. He shifted from energy to matter

and back again, multiplied himself infinitely,

turned his essence inside out, and twisted sideways

through subspace. Yet whatever he did, no matter

how protean his metamorphoses, how unlikely and

ingenious his contortions, his captors kept up with

him, holding him tighter than an atom clung to its

protons. They can't do this to me, he fumed, tears

of rage and frustration leaking from his eyes when-

ever he had eyes. I'm a Q, for Q's sake!

    But Gorgan and The One were formidable enti-

ties in their own rights. Together, and assisted

perhaps by the unholy energies of (*), they were

enough to drag the struggling Q safely distant from

where 0 now toyed with the Tkon's sun. "Sorry

about this, friend," 0 said, watching Q's futile

efforts to liberate himself with open amusement.

"It's for your own good. Obviously, you still have a

lot to learn about the finer nuances of testing. Most

importantly, you must never let vain little vermin

like these get the better of you; it only means that

you didn't make the standards stringent enough to

begin with. Remember this, Q," he said, shaking a

finger on his free hand pedantically. "If the test

isn't hard enough, make it harder. That's the only

way to ensure the right results."

    He's insane, Q realized suddenly, wondering

how he had missed it before. I was so blind.

Defeated, he reassumed his original form, sagging

limply between Gorgon and The One, only their

constant restraint holding him upright. "What are

you doing?" he whispered, fearful of the answer.

    0 shrugged. "Nothing much. Just speeding things

up a mite. Take a look."

    All around the star, the metallic lattice began to

glow with carefully controlled energy. The Tkon

were beginning the transference. In the throne

room of the imperial palace, beneath a majestic

stained-glass dome commemorating a thousand

generations of the Sov dynasty, the aged empress,

no more than a fragile wisp of her former self, but

with eyes still bright and alert, gratefully accepted a

tiny goblet of honey wine from her faithful first

minister as they gazed in rapture at the culmina-

tion of the Great Endeavor to which she had

devoted her life and her empire. Throughout the

solar system and beyond, trillions of golden eyes

watched viewscreens large and small, and the citi-

zens held their breath in anticipation of the miracle

to come.

    But within the heart of the dying sun, a darker

miracle was taking place. The last of the star's

diminishing supply of hydrogen fused rapidly into

helium, which fused just as quickly into carbon,

which fused in turn into heavier elements such as

oxygen and neon, chemical processes that should

have taken millions of years occurring in the space

of a heartbeat. The heavy elements continued to

fuse at an unnatural rate, producing atoms of

sodium and magnesium, s'dicon, nickel, and so on,

unt'd the star began to fill with pure, elemental iron.

The dense iron atoms resisted fusion for an instant,

but 0 exerted his will and forced the very electrons

orbiting the nucleus of the iron atoms to crash

down into the nucleus, initiating a fatal chain

reaction that should not have taken place for

several million more years.

    "Stop," Q whispered hoarsely, knowing what

was to come. The star was stfil at the center of the

empire/

 

    On null-stations positioned around the lattice,

and in control rooms manned by expert technolo-

gists, jubilant anticipation turned into panic as

painstakingly calibrated instruments, tested and

refined for decades, began delivering data too im-

possible to believe, Thestar was changing bofore

their eyes, aging millions of years in a matter Of

seconds, turning into a ticldng time bomb with an

extraordinarily short fuse. "What is it? What's

happening?" asked the empress in herthrone room

as the countdown to the planned solar transference

suddenly came to a halt, and puzzled ambassadors

and governors and wavecasters and war tenors and

sages exchanged baffled and anxious looks. "I don't

understand," she began, putting down her goblet,

"Has something gone wrong?"

    Her primary scientific adviser, psionically linked

to the project's control center, blanched, his face

turning as white as milk, "The sun ..." he gasped,

too shocked to even think of lowering his voice,

"it's fluxing too fast, Much too fast. It's going to

destroy us all."

    "Why?" the empress demanded, leaning forward

on her throne. "Was it something we did? Did the

Endeavor cause this?" She grasped for some solu-

tion, the proper course of action. "What if we halt

the procedure?"

    "No," the trembling adviser said, shaking his

head. "You don't understand. We couldn't do this,

Nothing could do this, It's impossible, I tell you.

This can't he happening."

 

    It's him, she realized. Thefigure from my dream.

The executioner with the sword. His wicked game is

coming to its end. After all their struggles, all the

glory of their ancient past and the hardships of her

own generation, could their entire future be extin-

guished so abruptly and with so little compassion?

It seemed unthinkable, and immeasurably unjust,

but somehow it was so. How could they contend

against a vicious god?

    "We did our best," she whispered to her people

in their final moments. A single tear ran down her

cheek. "Let that always be remem--"

    She never finished that sentence. The red sun,

rushing through its death throes at O's instigation,

expanded in size, swallowing and incinerating all

the inner planets of the system, including fabled

Tkon. 0 jumped back from the ballooning star,

scrambling away like a man who has just lit a

firecracker. Gorgan, The One, and (*) retreated as

well, dragging Q with them. All of them knew that

the sudden expansion was only the beginning,.

    An instant later, the star collapsed upon itseft, its

entire mass imploding, raining back upon the stel-

lar core, which then exploded again in a spectacu-

lar release of light and heat and force that dwarfed,

by countless orders of magnitude, all the energy it

had previously emitted over all the billions of years

of its long existence. For one brief cosmic second, it

shone brighter than the rest of the Milky Way

galaxy put together, including what would someday

be called the Alpha Quadrant. The flare could be

seen beyond the galactic barrier itself, glowing like

the Star of Bethlehem in the skies of distant worlds

too far away to be reached even at transwarp speed.

    Thanks to O, the Tkon's sun had become a

supernova, only moments before they hoped to say

farewell to it forever.

 

 

 

 

Chapter Sixteen

 

JEn~-Luc PICARD WATCHED in hushed silence as the

entire Tkon Empire was destroyed for all time. He

was horrified, but not surprised. After the Enter-

prise's encounter with the ancient Tkon portal on

Delphi Ardu, Picard had reviewed the archaeologi-

cal literature on the Tkon Empire, so he knew all

about the supernova that eventually annihilated

their civilization. He had never guessed, however,

that Q had played any part in that disaster. I've

always wondered, he thought, how a culture capable

of moving stars and planets at will couM be de-

stroyed by a predictable stellar phenomenon. Now I

know.

    It was one thing, though, to read about the

extinction of a people in a dry historical treatise; it

was something else altogether to witness the trage-

dy with his own eyes, share the lives of some of the

individuals involved. His throat tightened with

emotion. He blinked back tears. Trillions of fatali-

ties were just a statistic, he reflected, until you were

forced to realize that every one of those trillions

was a sentient being with dreams and aspirations

much like your own.

    He had to wonder what humanity would do, four

billion years hence, when Earth's own sun faced its

end. Will we display the prescience and the resolve

that the Tkon achieved in the face of their greatest

challenge? Will we seize the chance for survival that

was so cruelly snatched away j?om the Tkon at the

last minute? He prayed that generations of men and

women yet unborn would succeed where the Tkon

so nobly failed, and thanked heaven that a similar

crisis would not face the Federation in his lifetime.

    Or would it? The Tkon's sun had ultimately

detonated millions of years before its appointed

time, thanks to the preternatural influence of be-

ings like Q. What was to stop such creatures from

doing the same to Earth's sun, or any other star in

the Alpha Quadrant? He glanced at the familiar

entity beside him, presently honoring the death of

the Tkon with an uncharacteristic moment of si-

lence, and was newly chilled by the terrifying

potential of Q's abilities. Q has threatened humani-

ty with total obliteration so many times, he thought,

that I suppose I should not be too shocked to

discover that he has been involved in carrying out

just such an atrocity, no matter how indirectly. It

was easy to think of Q as simply a prankster and a

nuisance. The supernova blazing before them bore

awful testament to just how dangerous Q and his

kind really were.

    "It's not a total loss, you know," Q said finally.

"Supernovae such as that one are the only place in

the universe where elements heavier than iron are

created. Ultimately, the raw materials of your

reality, even the very atoms that make up your

physical bodies, were born in the heart of an

awesome stellar conflagration such we now behold.

Who knows? There may be a little bit of Tkon in

you, Jean-Luc."

    "Small comfort to the trillions who perished,

Q," Picard responded. The face of the Tkon em-

press, both as a lovely young woman and as the fine

old lady she became, was still fresh in his memory.

She came so close to saving her people.

    "Try to take the long view, Picard." Q squinted

at the luminous ball of light that had consumed the

Tkon Empire; it was like staring straight into a

matter/antimatter reaction. "All civilizations col-

lapse eventually. Besides, there are still traces of

the Tkon floating around the galaxy, even in your

time. Artifacts and relics that attest to their place

in history."

    "Like the ruins on Delphi Ardu," Picard sug-

gested. He wished now that he had visited the site

himself, instead of sending an away team. Riker

had been quite impressed by what he had seen of

the Tkon's technology and culture.

    "Just to name one example," Q said. "Then

there's this little toy." He wandered away from the

nova, past what had been the Tkon's home system,

until he came upon a golden star, about the size of

a large tribble, encased within what looked like a

wire framework. A few lighted crystal chips, strung

like beads upon the wire lattice, blinked on and off

sporadically. Of course, Picard recalled, the sun the

Ticon had intended to beam into their system, and

the gigantic transporter array they constructed to do

so. "It's still there," Q stated, "forgotten and never

used. If I were you, Picard, I'd find it before the

Borg or the Dominion do." He gave the relic a

cursory glance. "Not that this has anything to do

with why we're here, mind you."

    Picard saw an opportunity to press Q on his

motives. "Very well, then. If the destruction is so

very insignificant, on a cosmic scale, they why are

we here? What's the point?"

    "Isn't it obvious?" Q asked, sounding exasper-

ated. He turned and spoke to Picard very dis-

tinctly, pronouncing each word with patronizing

slowness and clarity. "This isn't about the Tkon.

It's about him."

 

    The blinding flash of the supernova dazzled Q

right before the shock wave knocked him off his

feet. He tumbled backward, the force of the explo-

sion wrenching him free of Gorgan and The One,

who were equally staggered by the blast. Q scram-

bled to his feet, several light-years away from

the nova, then stared slack-jawed at what 0 had

wrought. The light and the impact may have hit

him already, but the psychological and emotional

effect of what had happened was still sinking in.

    A series of lesser shock waves followed the initial

explosion, shaking the space-time continuum like

the lingering aftershocks of a major earthquake. Q

tottered upon his heels, striving to maintain his

balance, while some detached component of intel-

lect wondered absently how much of the star's

mass remained after the detonation; depending on

the mass of the stellar remnant, Tkon's sun could

now devolve into either a neutron star or a black

hole. He watched in a state of shock as, in the wake

of the supernova, the collapsing star shed a huge

gaseous nebula composed of glowing radioactive

elements. The gases were expelled rapidly by the

stellar remnant, expanding past Q and the others

like a gust of hot steam that left Q gasping and

choking. Cooling elemental debris clung to his face

and hands like perspiration. "Ugh," he said, gri-

macing. He'd forgotten how dreadful a supernova

smelled.

    The radioactive nebula expanded past Q, leaving

him a clear view of all that remained of the huge

red orb that had once lighted an empire. The stellar

remnant had imploded even further while he was

blinded by the noxious gases, achieving its ultimate

destiny. He couldn't actually see it, of course, since

there was literally nothing there except a profound

absence, but he knew a black hole when he saw one.

He could feel its gravitational pull from where he

was standing, pulling at his feet like an undertow.

Was this void, this empty black cavity, all that was

left of the Tkon empress and all her people?

    It's all my fault, he thought. This wasn't supposed

to happen.

    He turned on 0 in a rage. "How could you do

that? They were winning your stupid game, then

you changed the rules! A supernova, without any

warning? How in creation could they possibly

survive that?"

    His henchmen, no longer jarred by the explosion

of moments before, began to converge on Q once

more, but 0 waved them away. Now that the deed

was done, he appeared more than willing to face

the young Q's anger. He wiped the stellar plasma

from his hands, then straightened his jacket before

addressing Q's objections. "Now, now, Q. Let's not

get too worked up over this. You clearly missed the

point of this exercise. I was simply testing their

ability to cope with the completely unexpected,

and isn't that really the only test that truly matters?

Any simple species can cope with civil disorder or

minor natural disasters. That's no guarantee of

greatness. We have to be more strict than that,

more stringent in our standards." He tilted his

head toward the black hole a few parsecs away,

assuming a philosophical expression. "Face facts,

Q. If your little Tkon couldn't handle something

as routine as an ordinary supernova, then they

wouldn't have amounted to much anyway."

 

"He sounds just like you," Picard observed.

"You must be joking." Q looked genuinely of-

fended by the suggestion, although thankfully more

appalled than annoyed. "Even so dim a specimen

as yourself must be able to see the fundamental

difference between me and that... megaloma-

niacal sadist and his obsequious underlings."

    "Which is?" Picard asked, pushing his luck. In

truth, he had a vague idea of where Q was going

with this, but he wanted to hear it from Q's own

lips.

    "I play fair, Jean-Luc." He held out the palms of

his hands, beseeching Picard to understand.

"There's nothing wrong, necessarily, with tests and

games, but you have to play fair. Surely you'll

concede, despite whatever petty inconveniences I

may have imposed on you in the past, that I have

always scrupulously held fast to the rules of what-

ever game we were playing, even if I sometimes

found myself wishing otherwise."

    "Perhaps," Picard granted. He could quibble

over Q's idea of fairness, particularly when com-

peting against unwilling beings of vastly lesser

abilities, but allowed that, with varying degrees of

good sportsmanship, Q had let Picard win on

occasion. At least that's something, he thought,

feeling slightly less apprehensive than he had mere

moments ago. "And 07" he prompted. "And the

Tkon?"

    Q made a contemptuous face. "That was no test,

that was a blood sport."

 

    His younger self could not yet articulate his

feelings so dearly. Distraught and disoriented, he

wavered in the face of 0's snow of words. 0 sounded

so calm, so reasonable now. "But you killed them

all," he blurted. "What's the good of testing them if

they all end up dead?"

    "An occupational hazard of mortality," 0

pointed out quite matter-of-factly. "You can't let it

get to you, Q. I know it's hard at first. Little

helpless creatures can be very appealing some-

times. But trust me on this, the testing gets easier

the more you do it. Isn't that right, comrades?"

The other entities murmured their assent, except

for (*), who maintained his silence. "Pretty soon,

Q, it won't bother you at all."

    Q thought that over. The idea of feeling better

later was attractive, offering the promise of a balm

for his stinging conscience, but maybe you were

supposed to feel a little bad after you blew up some

poor species' sun. Is this what I want to do with my

immortality? he wondered. Is 0 who I really want to

be?

    "Let me ask you something," he said at last,

looking 0 squarely in the eye. He knew now what

he needed to know. "Aside from the Coulalak-

ritous, has any species--anywhere--ever survived

one of your tests?"

    0 didn't even bother to lie. The predatory gleam

in his eyes and the smirk that crossed his face were

all the answer Q required.

 

It was the beginning of the first Q war ....

 

TO BE CONTINUED