Only Human: Part I, Section 9 of 10 Only Human An ST:TNG Alternate Universe Novel by Alara Rogers ONLY HUMAN is a work in progress, and it's very, very long. I have broken Part I (I think there will be six parts, total) into 10 subsections for ease of posting, and ease of other people reading; Part I is over 300 K, so I've broken it into sections of between 10 and 60 K so no one's newsreader vomits. These sections are done with some eye to logical breaking points, such as major scene changes, but the story was not originally written with the need for breaking points in mind. The separate subsections do not have individual titles; the chapter name for Part I, total, is "Starbase 56/Enterprise". This is, as yet, something of a draft-- if I find it necessary to revise based on what happens in parts IV-VI, or however many I end up writing, I will do so. The most recent version is available from various archive sites. Check out: ftp://ftp.netcom.com/pub/al/aleph/trek ftp://ftp.europa.com/outgoing/mercutio/alt.fan.q ftp://aviary.share.net/pub/startrek/incomplete (though maybe I will move it from incomplete, if I can figure out whether it belongs in TNG or other) http://www.europa.com/~mercutio/Q.html http://aviary.share.net/~alara http://www1.mhv.net/~alara/ohtree.html ONLY HUMAN is an Aleph Press production, not-for-profit, and not intended to infringe on anybody's copyrights. The universe, the Enterprise crew, and the main character were created by Paramount; most of the secondary characters were created by me, with the exception of yet more Paramount characters and some other people who know who they are. Any resemblance to real people, living or dead, is probably intentional. Send comments, criticism, praise and flames to aleph@netcom.com. Or post your comments here-- I have a very thick skin. * * * As she left sickbay, T'Laren consciously performed the disciplines to calm herself down. She had maintained complete outward control in the conversation with Q, and had not allowed herself to become sidetracked or misdirected. Inside, however, she was experiencing the descent from an adrenaline rush, something that should not have happened. Q was probably the most verbally skilled of all her patients, and demanded similar skill of his conversational opponents if he was to respect them. A single misstep, and she could have lost him. The conversation had been exhilarating, and a little bit frightening, and she had been too busy concentrating on winning to notice her internal control slipping. *It should not be this way. It should be instinct, second nature. I shouldn't have to work so hard for internal control all the time.* External control *was* instinct. She showed exactly what she wanted to show, whether it was falsified emotion, a Vulcan mask, or her true inner feelings. But internal control had always eluded her. Even now, when she was better at it than she'd ever been before in her life, she still didn't feel truly Vulcan. Enough. The problem wouldn't go away if she ignored it; but as there was nothing she could do about it now, and Q was higher priority, she could not afford to pay attention to it. As she headed for Anderson's office, she concentrated entirely on the task at hand. In order to keep beating Q at his own game, she needed to know more about him, from as many perspectives as possible. "Well, certainly." Anderson leaned forward across the desk. "I'm not the only one you should talk to, if you want people's input on Q, though. Did you talk to Counselor Medellin?" "I've spent the last three days doing that, while I waited for him to wake up," T'Laren said. "Counselor Medellin's a very insightful woman. The things she told me proved invaluable in my interview with Q today. But I need as many perspectives as possible. I'd like to talk to you and to as many members of the Science Department as I can, since they have frequent dealings with him." "That's fine. How did your talk with him today go?" "Quite well, I think." T'Laren allowed the faintest hint of a smile to cross her face-- not a full smile, since people were disturbed by the sight of a smiling Vulcan, but enough to subliminally reassure. "At least, as well as any talk with Q can go. I'm beginning to get the shape of what I'm up against." Anderson grinned. "Don't say I didn't warn you." She leaned back again. "What would you like to talk about?" "I'd like to begin with an incident I've wondered about," T'Laren said, steepling her fingers. "In the records, it states that a monitor was placed in Q's quarters after his second suicide attempt, and that it was removed after he went on a hunger strike to protest it." She saw Anderson tensing, and hastened to add, "Please note-- I'm not trying to second-guess your judgement, or make any criticisms of your decisions. I simply would like to understand the incident in a bit more detail." Anderson smiled. "Have I been that oversensitive, Doctor?" she asked. "You don't need to be quite *that* careful of my feelings." "I'm glad." T'Laren let herself relax visibly. "I've dealt with far too many starship and starbase commanders who perceive any questions as a threat to their authority. I'm happy to see you're not like that." "No. I'm not quite that much of a martinet." She leaned forward slightly. "I'm going to have to put the whole thing into the perspective of the time. You read in the files about Security Chief Ohmura's death?" "I read that he died protecting Q from an assassin, yes." "This was the situation. A human man named Tom Lindon came aboard with a collection of 19th and 20th century antiques, claiming to be an antiques dealer who'd heard about Q's interest in Earth antiques. Several of the items in his collection were weapons-- antique firearms-- but Commander Ohmura didn't consider that a problem. Lindon had impeccable credentials stating that he was in fact who he said he was, and it's far from illegal to sell antique weapons. Also, we were used to attacks from alien species no one ever heard of, not fellow humans. Ohmura checked that the firearms were unloaded, and let him through to see Q. "Several people showed up to see what was going on; Q's not the only person on the base with an interest in antiques, and itinerant traders are usually a source of color and entertainment on a starbase. At some point, Lindon must have loaded one of the firearms-- I'm not sure how. I never got a chance to talk to Ohmura about it, and certainly *I* didn't see him do it. But in any case, he waited until nearly everyone in the room was on one side, looking at his wares. He then pulled the gun and announced that he was going to kill Q. "It was a stupid move on his part. There was a table between him and Q; Q could have ducked. Q didn't. I screamed at him to get down, but he froze. There was no one who could reach Lindon in time, and no time for anyone to draw a phaser. Ohmura was closest to Q; he threw himself in front of Q, knocking him down, and got a bullet in the back of the head." Anderson shook her head. "We think of 20th century weapons as antiques, almost harmless things when compared to today's weapons. But a bullet in the back of the skull is just as deadly to us today as it was to our ancestors four hundred years ago. "Another security officer reached Lindon and disarmed him. Once we had him neutralized, he told us everything quite freely. He really was an antique dealer, who'd been approached by an alien woman named Jihana Melex to kill Q. According to him, Melex had given him strict orders not to harm anyone else. AWe tracked her down and captured her, where she corroborated Lindon's story. She also explained why she wanted Q dead-- about twenty years ago, he had come to her starship and put the crew through a particularly ruthless test. All of them failed but her. All of them died, but her. When she learned that her crewmates' murderer was on Starbase 56 and vulnerable, she came to Federation space, researched our defenses, and hired the antique dealer, who was quite taken with her. "We asked Q about her story. I think we were all hoping he'd deny it. That Ohmura hadn't just died to protect a murderer. We'd never had any direct evidence of his crimes before, except for the ones he committed against the Enterprise. We all wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt-- at least I did. And all he said was that he'd been in a bad mood that day." "Difficult to understand how *anyone* could have that little conception of how to deal with people," T'Laren said. "It is. It's very difficult. I tell you in confidence, Doctor, I wanted him dead. Lieutenant Commander Ohmura was a good man, friendly and warm, something you very rarely see in a security chief. He did his job well, and he could be intimidating as hell when he had to be, but when he was off-duty he was cheerful, kind... Too many security men are cold and suspicious all the time. Ohmura wasn't. Which might be what killed him, that he gave Lindon the benefit of the doubt. But everyone liked him and no one liked Q, and it'd just turned out that Q was a monster who'd deserved to die. Melex's story was heartwrenching. We could all understand why she'd want to kill Q; all of us have been on starships, all of us have seen fellow crew killed pointlessly. And the worst of it was that if Q had obeyed my order and ducked, Ohmura wouldn't have needed to knock him down and die for it. I sent Melex to Earth to be tried for conspiracy and attempted murder, but I couldn't really blame her for what she'd done. I blamed Lindon and I blamed Q. "I wasn't the only one who blamed Q, as it turned out. He used to take long walks around the perimeter of the station. A few days after Ohmura's death, the security monitors on a portion of the perimeter went down. Q happened to be in that portion of the perimeter. Two human males ambushed him and beat him within an inch of his life. He said later that he couldn't identify his assailants, as the lighting was dim-- it was night on the base-- and they wore masks. But they had to be two of our own security. No one else would have had access to the security monitors to shut them down without Engineering noticing. "I was furious. Mostly I was angry at the men who'd done it; regardless of our opinion of him, Q was still under our protection, and attacking an unarmed civilian is not Starfleet behavior. But partially I was angry at Q himself. I felt as if he'd provoked the attack. So I restricted his movements to the main areas of the base. He accused me of punishing him for being a victim... I denied it at the time, I said it was for his safety, but in retrospect he was right. I *was* punishing him." "Do you think he did do anything to provoke the attack? That perhaps it began as a verbal fight that escalated?" "No. According to Q himself, the two simply grabbed him as he came around a corner, ripped off his combadge, and began beating him. All they said was that this was for Ohmura-- who would have despised such behavior in his department. I don't necessarily believe everything Q says, but when we finally caught the perpetrators, they didn't deny the accusation or try to claim he provoked them directly. Besides, there were the monitor failures. That had to be set up in advance. No, they set out to ambush Q." "Did he make any attempt to fight back?" "I doubt it. For someone that so many beings want dead, Q's singularly incompetent at defending himself. He's more skilled at verbal attacks and defense than anyone I've ever seen, but let it get physical and he's helpless. You wouldn't think so; he's a big man, but he has no idea how to use his body in a fight. I saw this at work once. In the early days of his time here, maybe two or three months after his arrival, he went into the bar in the transients' sector. We had a number of visitors in dock, most of whom didn't have anything to do with him. He said the wrong thing to the wrong being and all of a sudden he was a bloody pulp on the floor, screaming for help. I ordered him to take self-defense training after that, but... he's got no natural instinct to hit back. Q's first reaction to being attacked is to run. If he can't run, he curls up in a fetal ball and begs for mercy. It's not entirely ineffective-- most races find it hard to keep pounding on someone who's so abjectly helpless." "Why do you think he can't fight back? He's certainly defended himself in the past--" "--by turning people into ice cubes or eels or small babies, or sending them into oblivion, or any number of other creatively nasty attacks. Yes, I know. I wouldn't call those defenses, though. Let's face it, none of the people he did things like that to could possibly have hurt him. I think it's the fear of pain that paralyzes him. If you strike at someone, you become vulnerable yourself. He learned one or two techniques in theory, but he can't use them in an actual fight. When we started preparation for the Borg, he didn't have time for the self- defense classes anymore, especially considering how he stubbornly refused to get any use out of them, so I let him quit. Maybe I shouldn't have." "He doesn't seem to learn anything from being attacked, then." "Oh, he learns," Anderson said, with a touch of exasperation. "He just learns the wrong thing. He hasn't been back in the bar without bodyguards and an express invitation since he got beaten up there. Rather than learning not to antagonize people or how to defend himself, he's learned not to go to bars." "Did he learn anything from being attacked by Security?" "I'm not sure. We found the perpetrators and court-martialed them, but there continued to be a cold war between Q and Security. He kept complaining to me that they were making his life miserable, but there was nothing I could actually reprimand them for. Showing up late to escort him somewhere, staring at him while he ate, that sort of thing. And I admit I didn't try very hard to find some way to reprimand them. Q had made all of our lives miserable for close to two years now, and... it was just very easy to despise him." She shook her head. "It says something about humanity, you know. We believe we've come so far, we're so modern and compassionate and we've driven all the demons out of our souls. But even people in Starfleet, the best of the breed, are capable of beating a helpless civilian senseless as he pleads for mercy and then blaming him for the attack. What does that say about us? Sometimes I think you Vulcans had the right idea in getting rid of all emotion." "It would be a poorer universe, if everyone in it was a Vulcan," T'Laren said. "And even Vulcans are capable of doing despicable things. I won't put any of this in any kind of report to Starfleet, Commodore; I don't think Starfleet analysts could understand the pressures you were under." "I'm sometimes not sure I understand." Anderson put a hand to her forehead, supporting herself with an elbow on the desk. "I haven't even really gotten to the worst part yet... After about two weeks of this, Q filled up his bathtub with water, smashed a ceramic mug to get a sharp edge, and cut his wrists." "His bathtub?" "Another of his antiques. You have to understand, cutting your wrists in the bathtub is the granddaddy of all melodramatic gestures. The cuts were shallow, they were across the wrist instead of along it, and he did this in the middle of the day, about two hours before he was scheduled to meet with visitors. There was almost no chance he would actually die before someone found him. I was furious with him. It was as if he was trying to shift the whole thing away from Ohmura's death and back to poor, poor pitiful Q. And I just didn't want to fall for it. I took away the bathtub and most of the other antiques, on the grounds that they were sharp or breakable or hard enough for him to crack his skull on, increased his replicator restrictions so he couldn't get anything dangerous-- etching solution never occurred to me, I'm afraid. But I was determined to prevent him from making any more of these ridiculous melodramatic gestures. I started thinking that his first suicide attempt hadn't been a serious attempt, either. That was a month or two after we defeated the Borg, and it seemed to me suddenly that that one had to have been a bid for attention and sympathy, too. And we fell for it. And I was damned if I was going to fall for it this time." "But it seems to me as if the attempt might almost have been an apology," T'Laren said. From her talk with Q, she didn't think that attempt had been a bid for sympathy, but it seemed such a studiedly incompetent method of dying that it almost had to be a gesture of some sort. "A recognition that he'd done something horrible and that he couldn't live with the pain he'd caused. Did that interpretation occur to anyone?" "Quite frankly, no. Q doesn't feel guilt. He doesn't understand the concept. Anyone who could dismiss the deaths of 45 sentient beings with 'I was in a bad mood that day' obviously doesn't feel guilt. Or at least, if he does, he spends a lot of effort to hide it. I've never seen him appear even slightly remorseful for anything." "Mm. So at this point you put in the monitor?" "Yes. He'd made a few token protests about the replicator restrictions and the loss of his collection. His argument was that he was still miserable, but Counselor Medellin had reminded him why he was putting up with this, which was the chance that he would get his powers back, and he wasn't going to do anything to jeopardize that again. I didn't believe him. He'd told me the last time he attempted suicide that he'd never try it again. And he didn't put up much of a fight. When I told him I'd put in the monitor, though, he became hysterical. He told me that a lack of privacy would in itself surely drive him to suicide again, and that he was going to go on a hunger strike until the monitor came out. And I said, 'Go ahead.'" Anderson's voice dropped almost to a whisper on the last words. She was evidently unhappy with what she'd done. T'Laren thought she would appreciate a chance to explain herself, and obligingly asked, "Why?" "In the first place, I didn't think he could go through with it. Q can't handle pain of any sort. Not that he couldn't go hungry for a few days; there were a few times during the work against the Borg that he literally forgot to eat for a day or two. And remind me later to tell you about that whole thing with the Borg later, because I think you need to know about it for balance, but I want to finish this. A day or two without eating wouldn't hurt him, I figured, and I didn't think he could stick it out longer than that. Also, he was terrified of boredom, and I was sure I could get him to eat if I had to by cutting off his computer access. And in a last resort we could force-feed him. This was just another one of his grand melodramatic gestures, and I still refused to fall for it. "I had him watched. For two days he went about his daily business without eating. He didn't draw any attention to the fact that he wasn't eating, he just didn't eat. I was surprised. It isn't like Q to do anything quietly, and making a grand gesture seems rather pointless if you don't tell anyone about it. But I watched him, and on the third day, when he was supposed to receive important visitors, *then* he chose to make his grand gesture. He announced to the world in general that he was going on a hunger strike to get the monitor out of his quarters, and that he refused to see any visitors or talk to anyone until the monitor was out. He then took to his bed. "I cut off his computer access and waited for him to get bored and demand it back. He didn't. He sat in bed reading an antique book. So I sent security in to get his books, and I told him he'd get them back when he ate. He didn't say anything. Just stared at me. I expected him to break down about half an hour after that. He didn't. He stayed in bed, staring at the ceiling, for three days. On the third day--" She hesitated again, looking ashamed. "On the third day I had food smells pumped into his room through his air vents. I was sure that would do it. It didn't. He stayed in bed. So I gave in." "Why was that the turning point?" "If it was that important to him-- Q had said repeatedly in the past that he couldn't survive without computer access, that boredom would kill him, that sort of thing. Obviously this wasn't literally true, but it said something about his priorities. Going without food just said he had a bit more self-control than I'd thought. Putting up with utter boredom and simply staying in bed- - I mean, I was watching him. He didn't *do* anything but sleep and stare at the ceiling. And that impressed me. It was a gesture, of course, but sometimes I think the only way Q can communicate is through gestures. He was telling me that this issue of privacy was more important than the thing he'd previously told me was the most important thing in his life. And when he still didn't respond after the food smells, I was ashamed of myself. I had expected that to break him quickly. If he had the self-control to hold out, then this had to be immensely important to him, and I was torturing him. I can be a hardass on occasion, but I like to think I'm not a torturer. So I took the monitor out." She sighed. "Maybe I should have put it back in surreptitiously. But Q's not a prisoner here. He's legally a Federation citizen now; he's got rights. And if security hated me, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't want a monitor of any sort in my quarters, either. Besides, he didn't seem suicidal anymore. I can't say he seemed happy to be alive, but he seemed pretty determined to stay that way, after the whole hunger strike thing was over. And I'd thought the whole thing was a gesture anyway, and that he'd learned that that particular gesture didn't work." "Do you still think it was a gesture? In the light of current events?" "I don't know. I'd still like to believe it was. Because if he was genuinely trying to do himself in... then we drove him to it, that time at least. He came here for protection and we pushed him into trying to kill himself." T'Laren hesitated. That seemed the likeliest alternative, from what she had gathered. But she was in no position to judge. She had done far worse in her time than drive an unstable man to the brink of suicide. "I won't deny that Starbase 56 hasn't been the best emotional climate for him. But you shouldn't be too hard on yourself, either. Humans have limits. As do Vulcans. As, apparently, do members of the Q Continuum, or Q would still be their problem and not ours." Anderson made a slightly impatient gesture of negation, shaking her head once and chopping the air with a half-clenched fist. "The thing is that he isn't completely hopeless. Or he wasn't, two years ago. When we were working against the Borg, it was like he was a different man." "Yes, you did say you wanted to tell me about that time. What was different?" "When he first came here, his first month or so, he was at his absolute worst. I think he was testing the limits, seeing how much he could get away with. But in the third or fourth month, we started preparations against the Borg. And since Q knew more about the Borg than any of us, there was never any question but that he'd have a focal role in preparing for our defense. "He knew approximately when they'd be arriving, so we knew we were under a time constraint. And we had scientists, engineers, tacticians, all sorts of people coming through here to talk to Q-- and he behaved himself beautifully. It really was as if he were a different man. He still got impatient, but he was almost never nasty or obnoxious, and never obstructionist. He drove himself the way the rest of us did-- in some respects more; I think he got less sleep than any other human on the project. He routinely pulled 20, 22-hour shifts. There were times when he'd forget to eat for a day or two." Anderson leaned forward, holding T'Laren's gaze intently, as she continued. "I do want to put this in perspective-- I'm not trying to imply that Q did anything superhuman, or anything that the rest of us didn't do. All of us pushed ourselves. But we were Starfleet, trained for this sort of crisis, and we were fighting for our homes and our lives. At one point Q said he expected to be struck by a bolt from the blue any minute now, for helping us against the Borg, and we all laughed. Later I asked him about it, and I found out he was serious. The Q Continuum apparently does have something roughly equivalent to a Prime Directive, and he was thrown out, in part, for breaking it. What we were planning to do, what he had advised us and helped us to do, would be tantamount to genocide. And he fully expected he was going to be punished, probably killed, for using his knowledge to do this. All the rest of us were fighting to preserve our lives and the lives of our families and friends. Q was actually risking his life in helping us." "Why did he do it?" "Oh, he said that he was fighting to preserve his own life, the same as the rest of us. The Borg would certainly kill him; the Q Continuum might or might not. But there were other things he said, when asked less baldly, that implied he just didn't want to see humanity destroyed. That whether he lived or died, he would rather see us destroy the Borg than vice versa. And I started to genuinely respect him. He was still too abrasive to really like, but he'd come so far, transcended all the whining and the self-pitying and the selfish demands. He was less physically suited for this than any of us, and he had less at stake than any of us, and he still managed to rise to the occasion with the rest of us. I was proud we had him here, then. I was glad to be protecting him. "And then we won. We managed to crash the Borg net, rendering them effectively helpless, and the joint Klingon- Federation fleet carved their ship into little bits. We had a victory party, and then everyone went home... and Q reverted to the same selfish bastard he'd been when he arrived. He'd shown that he was capable of matching the best humanity had to offer, and then he slid back. I was furious. If he could behave himself when it was important, obviously he knew how. So if he was being an asshole again, it was by choice. He *wanted* to be an asshole. He chose to do this. He'd shown me a glimpse of a decent human being under that facade, and then he'd gone and covered up that glimpse with mud. Do you understand how betrayed I felt?" "I think so," T'Laren said. "I *know* there's the potential to be a halfway decent person in there. I've *seen* it. But he negates it, and I don't know what would be worse; him not having any potential at all, or the fact that he does and he doesn't use it. If he were nothing but a complete selfish monster, I could just hate him. Or take him out of the category of sentient beings and put him in with forces of nature, like black holes. But there's just enough humanity in him that I can't do that. I think that makes it worse. Because I have to feel sorry for him when he self- destructs, as well as angry at him for the people he hurts along the way. It'd be easier if I could just hate him." "It's always easier to hate," T'Laren said. "That's why Starfleet tries so hard to train it out of its officers. I hope you're right, that there is some potential in there I can reach. I think there is." "I hope I'm right too and that it turns out you *can* reach it. Because Q may be valuable as a source of information, but he's worthless as a human being. And his life and the lives of everyone around him are going to be miserable as long as that's the case." Lieutenant Amy Frasier, biologist, was considerably less forgiving than Commodore Anderson. "No. There's no potential in there. He's just a complete bastard." "Why do you say so?" T'Laren asked. Frasier was a beautiful human woman with a slim, sensual body, ringlets of red hair, porcelain-pale skin and eyes the color of Vulcan blood. At the moment, though, her beauty was marred by a scowl of hatred. "I've had the misfortune of working with Q for three years. He's entirely despicable. A monster. He's killed god knows how many beings and tortured however many more for nothing more than his amusement, and he'd do it again if he got his powers back. I've asked never to be left in charge of him, because I don't know what I'd do. Our mission's supposed to be to protect him, for the sake of his knowledge, but I don't think he's given us a damn thing we couldn't have gotten ourselves, *including* the victory over the Borg, and if one of these alien assassins ever does manage to get him I'll dance on his grave." This sort of vitriol didn't exist in a vacuum. "Did he ever do anything to you personally?" T'Laren asked. "No," Frasier said, lying. The flash of fury in her eyes, the slight clenching of teeth and hands, all said "yes". The "no" was simply to inform T'Laren that she didn't want to talk about it or acknowledge it. "No more than he does to anyone else. Maybe I just see through all his bullshit more easily." Lieutenant Frasier wasn't exactly going to be a mine of information, T'Laren decided. More like a minefield. "Well, thank you for letting me talk to you." "Don't be fooled by him, Doctor," Frasier said, as T'Laren got up. "He may seem perfectly nice and innocent at first. But as soon as he's found a way under your skin, he goes for the jugular." "I'm a Vulcan," T'Laren said. "I doubt my jugular is located where Q thinks it is." Lieutenant Harry Roth, physicist, was helpful in shedding some light on Frasier's opinions. "You can't take anything Frasier says seriously," he said, laughing. "At least not where it comes to men, and especially not when it comes to Q." Roth was a slim, tall man with short curly black hair, a big nose, and expressive brown eyes. He wasn't particularly handsome, but he was pleasant to look at. Where Frasier had thrown off deadly radiation as soon as the subject of Q came up, Roth seemed cheery and sociable, with a pleasant British-accented speaking voice. T'Laren recognized that she would have a tendency to take his opinions more seriously because he was more personable, and filed the knowledge away under the heading of combatting her own biases. She had never achieved the Vulcan ideal of eliminating emotion, but she would acknowledge it, master it, and keep it from interfering. "Why do you say so?" she asked. "Well. Amy is... uh, there's not really any polite way to say this. Let's say Amy is a connoisseur of males. Klingons, Andorians, Betazoids, Rigellians... if it comes to this starbase, it's humanoid and it has three legs, she'll attempt to seduce it. She's even bragged about catching one or two Vulcan males. I'm not sure how much credence to give *that.*" "It's possible," T'Laren said. "The sort of Vulcans that go into Starfleet are generally not good upstanding Vulcan citizens. I believe the word actually would be 'perverts'." She gave him another of her almost-smiles. "Certainly Lieutenant Frasier's hypothetical partners wouldn't be the first Vulcans I've heard about who've had casual liaisons with humans." "Really." Roth grinned. "I suppose you guys can't all be as steadfastly monogamous as you like us to think." "Monogamy is illogical," T'Laren said blandly. "Sex is a learned skill, after all. How is one to maximize one's ability without studying from multiple sources?" Roth laughed. "You *are* joking, aren't you?" he said. "I never know with you folks. Commander Sekal is terribly serious I suppose I always assumed that all of you fit the stereotype, because he does so well." "I am a very atypical Vulcan," T'Laren said. "Yes, it was intended as a joke." "A joking Vulcan! Next I'll be meeting a Betazoid security officer!" Roth sobered a bit. "In all seriousness, however, I really wouldn't give a lot of weight to Amy's opinions regarding Q. As I've said, Amy collects new and different males. She liked Q fine for the first three months he was here-- in fact, she liked Q fine when no one else liked him at all, since he was quite the miserable bastard when first he got here. Then all of a sudden he became the Anti-Christ. I don't believe it's too difficult to piece together events." "You believe they had an affair?" "Oh, no, no, certainly not. I believe that was Amy's intention, however. Or rather, she no doubt intended a single night of pleasure, as she rarely keeps her men after the initial novelty's worn off. She's... not exactly subtle, either. I've been on the other side of her wiles once or twice. It's like being hit with a sledgehammer. And Q seems to be remarkably impervious to feminine charms, or anyone's charms for that matter. A sledgehammer is what it would take to get him to notice." "So Frasier hit him with a sledgehammer." "And he undoubtedly eviscerated her in response. Q is... well, I wouldn't want him rejecting *me*. Mind you, all this is rumor and guesswork. Amy doesn't talk about her failures and Q doesn't talk about sex, or his lack thereof, at all. But I imagine it had to have been fairly nasty, or she'd have spread rumors that she'd gotten him to drop drawers for her anyway. She does with most men. At one point the rumor mill was full of my supposed fling with her, before my co-workers learned just how much my type Amy is not." "How much your type *is* Lieutenant Frasier not?" T'Laren asked, and then shook her head. "I have no idea if that sentence made any sense." Roth grinned. "Well, it's my phrasing, so I understand you. For one thing, Amy's the wrong sex." "Ah. That would do it." T'Laren had been wondering if Roth's cheerily cruel descriptions of Frasier's activities might stem from some sort of sexual betrayal. It seemed unlikely now. "Then if I can't trust Frasier's opinions regarding Q, can I ask you for yours?" "Mine are rather heretical, I'm afraid," Roth said, smiling. "I don't actually mind him. When he's in his better moods, I rather enjoy talking to him." "That does seem somewhat heretical. Can you explain?" "Nothing easier. I worship intelligence, Dr. T'Laren. In my business, I have to deal with so many obnoxious posers and egotistical bastards who think they're the best thing that ever happened to Federation physics since Zephram Cochrane. Q genuinely *is.* I can put up with a great deal of arrogance from someone who's got the ability to back it up, and I'd say Q does. Beyond a doubt he's the brightest individual I've ever met, and I've met some of the Federation's brightest minds. I won't say I'd like to be his pal, or even that I could stand being locked in a room with him for forty-eight hours, but in small doses I find him quite tolerable." "The fact that he goes out of his way to offend and annoy people doesn't work with you?" "Well, you have to understand that Q does that sort of thing to varying degrees, depending on who he's dealing with. He respects intelligence. He has no respect for anything else. Q has no need for any of our social constructs, any of our little pleasantries. He doesn't care what your rank is or what sex you are or what you look like. He cares about exactly one thing: are you bright enough to hold a conversation with him without boring him? And I myself am not exactly stupid. I wouldn't put myself in Q's league, but I think he has some respect for me. So perhaps he's a little less cruel to me than he might be to others. And being bright and arrogant myself, I've got an awfully thick skin. He's occasionally said something that offended me deeply-- especially when he first arrived. He *was* a true bastard then. I think he's mellowed somewhat since. But the thing you have to understand is that he doesn't mean any of it personally. Brutally witty repartee seems to be the only way he knows how to relate to people. And since he's not my roomie or my brother or my superior officer, I don't have to put up with it all the time. It's occasionally refreshing to try to match wits with him for a while." "Yes, I've noticed that myself." "So I just learned not to take it personally. Verbal combat is an old and honorable form of interaction, after all. I wouldn't want to be limited to it, but an occasional joust does me no harm. And there are certainly some pompous bastards who've been in here that were desperately asking for a good skewering. I have occasionally stood on the sidelines and secretly cheered as Q deflated some balloon-head. And his presence here does bring the brightest. So I can't actually say that I have any reason to dislike him, at least not with the fervor that most of the base seems to devote to it." "Have you ever talked to him seriously? Without verbal jousting?" "About physics, yes. Quite often. About anything personal... not really, aside from the fact that when he's in a mood he complains constantly. That does get a bit tedious, I have to admit. But listening to Q whine is usually much more entertaining than listening to some pompous ambassador say *anything*, so even that doesn't put me out much." He frowned slightly. "Rumor has it that you've come to take him off our hands." "That's the theory." "I may be the only person on the base that'll miss him at all," Roth said with an ironic half-smile. "How is he, anyway?" "Physically, he's improving. I intend to have him out of bed and getting some exercise before the week's out, though I may have an argument with Dr. Li about that. Mentally, though..." She shook her head. "His condition's not very good. I have a great deal of work ahead of me to convince him that his best option isn't death." "I really am sorry to hear that. I don't suppose they'd let me in to visit, would they? Or would it be a good idea at all?" "It can't hurt to let him know that someone actually does not dislike him. He won't be able to talk back to you, however, so keep it short and try not to say anything he'd want to argue with." "That's quite an order," Roth said, smiling wryly. "Not saying anything he'd want to argue with might be a physical impossibility." "True." Lieutenant Commander Gretchen Wernicke, morphologist, didn't know Q personally well at all. "I don't have a lot of dealings with him," she admitted, "which suits me fine. But I have to tell you, I'd take anything Harry or Frasier told you with a grain of salt." "Lieutenant Roth warned me that Lieutenant Frasier may have ulterior motives in her hatred of Q." Wernicke, despite her Germanic name, was a tiny, nervous black woman with short hair, skin the color of chocolate mousse, and a habit of pacing. "He did, did he? Well, he would. His theory's that Frasier hates Q because Q rejected her, right?" "More or less." "It could well be true. I don't know. But whatever Harry said about Q himself, you have to worry about the same problem from the opposite direction." "The same problem? I'm not sure I take your meaning." "Look, Harry probably told you and if he didn't, I will. He likes men. And Q himself-- seems to attack women a lot worse than men. Maybe that's just my personal bias, but that's how it looks to me. He's nasty to everyone, but I always got the impression he saves the heavy artillery for women. He goes easier on men. You have to wonder." "You think Lieutenant Roth and Q--" "Oh, no. Not like that-- I don't think it ever got that far. I mean, it couldn't have, I don't care how discreet they were, it'd have gotten on the rumor mill. I'm almost surprised it didn't anyway, considering that everyone knows Harry's tastes and that he can actually stand Q. Me, Q's not my type. I didn't think he was attractive when he first showed up and he certainly looks like hell now. But he's definitely Harry's type-- bright, human, male, over 180 cm and not visibly deformed. Harry's not that picky." "But you don't think anything actually did happen between them." "Who wants to risk asking Q for anything? Frasier's not my favorite person, but one thing I can say, she's not exactly sensitive about rejection. Whatever Q did to her, it'd probably turn anyone else into a radioactive puddle of protoplasm. And Harry's a pretty sensitive guy. I mean, I could be totally wrong about all this. But I don't think Harry would even dare drop hints unless Q sent him an engraved invitation, and that's going to happen around the time the sun goes nova. Not that Q would notice hints, either." All of this was interesting, and somewhat helpful, but T'Laren was interested in more than rumors about Q's sex life. "What is your own opinion of Q?" Wernicke shrugged. "Like I said, I don't see him much-- there isn't much use for him in my specialty. I study the physical and neural structure of humanoid bodies. Q's structure is human; not much he can add there, and it's not a subject he knows anything about, except to occasionally contradict me by citing some ridiculous alien species that lives three galaxies away and none of us will ever see. From what I've seen... he's a jerk. I'm glad I don't have to work with him much. I don't have a very strong opinion one way or another, though I do keep wondering how a guy as old as he is could possibly be so incompetent with people. I mean, what do his own people do? Spend all their time arguing with each other? Or is that why they threw him out?" "I'm not sure," T'Laren said. "I tell you something, if I ever got to be a few million years old, *I* wouldn't act like a spoiled teenager. Maybe that makes me an inferior being. If so, I say long live inferiority. And if he's the future of humanity, maybe we should pack it in now." "I doubt he is." "I hope so. But I really don't have anything to add or whatever. Maybe you ought to talk to Commander Sekal, he works with Q a lot." T'Laren had no desire to talk to a fellow Vulcan for any reason whatsoever. "Perhaps I will," she said blandly, having even less desire to share her feelings with Commander Wernicke. In the end, Sekal cornered her. "It has come to my attention that you've been interviewing various members of my department regarding their impressions of Q." There could be no faking it, not with a real Vulcan. And that was ironic, because it was being faced with a fellow Vulcan that made T'Laren's pulse race and her throat go dry, far more than anything else could have. She had to remind herself that he didn't know her, had no idea of her disgrace, and couldn't actually see inside her skull the way Soram could. The fact that his tall, chiseled asceticism reminded her a lot of Soram didn't help. T'Laren forced down the panic, suppressing rather than mastering it, and responded coolly. "That is correct." "I had wondered if you planned to interview me as well. My experience in dealing with Q is not inconsiderable." *Can anyone explain to me why circumlocutions and expressions like "not inconsiderable" are somehow more logical than coming straight to the point?* "My interest is in gaining a picture of Q's emotional state and relations with fellow humans. It had not occurred to me that you would have any insight into his emotional condition that you would wish to share with me." *No. All wrong. I sound as if I'm accusing him of a lack of insight AND of withholding information, in the same sentence.* "Few Vulcans make a study of human emotional states, and--" Horrified, she trailed off, realizing she had no idea what to say next. "And I did not want to impose on you," she finished, somewhat lamely. Sekal raised an eyebrow. "I have lived among humans for thirty-three years now," he said. "It is impossible to function in Starfleet without some understanding of humans. And my work would be impossible without some understanding of Q. If only the ability to understand that he is likely to be particularly obstructionist under given circumstances." "I see. I should then avail myself of your understanding." She wished fervently he didn't look so much like Soram. Her control would be so much better if he didn't remind her of Soram. "That is acceptable," Sekal said. "Shall we go to my office?" "That would be best," T'Laren said, inwardly convinced it was far from best. *How can I have so many years of experience as a counselor, know so much about the psychology of aliens, and be so incompetent when it comes to my own kind? Lhoviri, are you sure this repair job of yours has really taken at all?* In Sekal's office, he motioned T'Laren to a seat and took one himself. He folded his hands on his desk. "I do not wish to invade your privacy," he said. "It has become obvious, however, that you are somewhat distressed in my presence." It took all of T'Laren's control to keep from turning visibly green. No Vulcan on Vulcan would ever be so forward. Was he just rude from years with humans, as she was, or had he decided to treat her as human because of her obviously feeble control? "My logic is unimpaired." "I make no accusations. Nor do I judge by the standards of the homeworld. There are too few Vulcans in Starfleet for us to condemn one another. If your distress arises from a belief that I would consider you less for your human behaviors, be assured that that is not the case. I fully understand that a counselor for humans must adopt human behavior to set them at ease, and that such a facade is not easily dropped." He was giving her a way to save face, a logical reason for her lack of control. T'Laren felt absurdly grateful. It was illogical to judge all Vulcans by her family and Soram, after all. Even little Sovaz, Soram's own sister, proved that not all Vulcans were judgmental. "I was raised among humans," T'Laren explained. "And I have spent most of my life among them. It creates difficulties." "I understand the problem. My wife, T'Meth, is a security officer. Fellow Vulcans have occasionally accused her of failing to live up to Surak's principles of pacifism. It apparently never occurred to them to apply Surak's principle of IDIC. So I am acquainted with the difficulty." His wife? Yes, of course he had a wife. All Vulcan men of a certain age had wives. Soram probably had another wife by now, too. Undoubtedly a calm and logical scientist who had spent her entire life on Vulcan and didn't like sex. And none of this had anything to do with Q. T'Laren wrenched herself from speculations on Soram's current circumstances and back to the subject. "What observations have you made regarding Q?" she asked. "Three months ago," Sekal began, "Q came to my office seeking information on the Vulcan disciplines. He wished to understand the difference between Vulcan lack of emotion and human apathy. Initially I was wary, suspecting this to be a prelude to some sort of attack." "Q often comes to your office to attack you?" "It has happened. Q varies his tactics depending on who he's dealing with. Usually his tactic with me is to condemn Vulcan discipline as a wasted effort, useless at best and actively harmful at worst." "Yet at the same time he's attacked humans for their emotions." "I know. I pointed this out to him once. He replied that consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." "That's a quote, actually," T'Laren said. "Or rather a misquote. Emerson said, 'A *foolish* consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.'" "I fear I've given Terran literature less attention than it deserves," Sekal said. "The point is that Q doesn't concern himself with being consistent. He attacks for the sake of attack. He conceives of himself as a devil's advocate, whose role in life is to challenge everyone and everything. So I expected that this would be a prelude to some sort of attack. Instead, it quickly became obvious that Q felt he had a genuine need for the information." Sekal hesitated. "I do not like to speculate without hard facts. But I believe that Q is not used to the intensity of human emotion, that he has never become used to it, and that it disturbs him." "Surely the Q experience emotion." "Surely they do. But I would imagine it's far less intense than what humans feel. When one's anger can destroy galaxies, one undoubtedly takes care to get angry rarely. In addition, as a being of pure thought Q would not have been subject to the hormonal fluctuations that make up so much of emotion." "Has he ever spoken to you of the Continuum?" "Once or twice. He dislikes talking about it, so I don't press him. He once analogized someone asking him about the Continuum to someone asking a crippled former marathoner how it felt to run in races. I could understand his point." He steepled his hands. "In any case. In our discussion, he made it quite clear that he sought to free himself from emotion, as much as humanly possible. He told me that he alternated between misery and apathy, that he could no longer bear either state, and that he feared his life would become entirely unbearable if he couldn't find a third alternative. So he wished to know how Vulcans perceive our lack of emotion, why we do not-- I believe his words were 'kill yourselves out of boredom.'" "What did you tell him?" "I explained that the Vulcan disciplines do not destroy all feelings. Vulcans are capable of feeling contentment, even happiness, certainly satisfaction. Obviously, the converse is true as well. Vulcan discipline permits us to overcome periods of unhappiness and dissatisfaction, so that we can attempt to find a logical solution to our problems. He asked me what a Vulcan would do if crippled, blinded, and exiled among hostile strangers, with little hope of return-- what the logical solution to that would be." "Many Vulcans would in fact believe the logical solution to be suicide," T'Laren said softly. "I'm aware of that, but I thought it unwise to tell Q so. I told him that if there was any hope the situation would ever be corrected, the Vulcan solution would be to hold out in hope of a better future. He then asked if he could learn the disciplines. I explained that no human has ever successfully adopted the Vulcan disciplines in full, even when trained in them from childhood. Q insisted that he was an exception, that his native intelligence should permit him to learn anything he wanted to. I further explained that he was far too old to learn-- even Vulcan children need to begin training before adulthood. He pointed out that his body was actually only three years old, chronologically, and that by the standards of the Continuum he was a young Q, approximately equivalent to an adolescent." "I've suspected that," T'Laren said, who had heard it from Lhoviri already. It was nice to have some independent confirmation of Lhoviri's statements, however. "As have I. But his youth in terms of his species is irrelevant, and I told him so. His body is physiologically in its late thirties or early forties. His brain is almost certainly not flexible enough to adopt an entirely new thinking process, and even if it were, the human brain is not designed for the sort of things Vulcan brains can do. He grew more and more insistent that he could overcome all these obstacles. Finally, I made it clear to him that he could not learn the Vulcan disciplines, at which point..." Sekal almost looked embarrassed. "He began to cry. Needless to say, I was startled and a bit discomfited by this. He was quite hysterical, insisting that this was his only hope. If he killed himself, there was no chance his people would take him back. He had to hang on to his mortal existence if he were to have any hope of regaining his powers, and he said he couldn't bear to stay alive much longer. If he couldn't learn the Vulcan disciplines, or some way to stop feeling, his misery would kill him." "Did this seem like his usual theatrics to you, or did he seem sincere?" "Difficult to tell. I'm not used to dealing with crying humans. I felt rather out of my depth, and offered to call Medellin, but Q begged me not to tell any human beings of this. He told me that if a human were to learn how he'd lost control, he couldn't live with the shame. I could understand his point. Thus I gave my word I would tell no humans of this." "You were manipulated," T'Laren said flatly. "How so?" "Q undoubtedly would feel shame at having an emotional weakness exposed to other humans. But that shame would be nothing equivalent to what a Vulcan would feel. Q used his knowledge of the Vulcan psyche to manipulate you into keeping his secret." "Perhaps. I am aware that the shame would not be equivalent, though. And there is another aspect to this that you don't know." "Indeed." T'Laren raised an eyebrow. "Please explain." "Q has been known to become paranoid," Sekal said. "I have sometimes wondered if he suffers from mental illness beyond his obvious depression. You have undoubtedly been told of the incidents surrounding Commander Ohmura's death?" "I know the situation." "A regrettable circumstance." Sekal shook his head, very slightly. "And an example of human illogic at its worst. Most of the population of Starbase 56 held Q responsible for Commander Ohmura's death, in part because his actions in the past brought an assassin and in part because he froze under pressure. Of course, as a civilian with no training in how to behave under pressure, Q's reaction is understandable, and the Federation had already determined that we would not hold him responsible for crimes he committed as an omnipotent being. Thus leaving no reason to blame Q; Ohmura died in the line of duty, nothing more. But few humans saw it that way." "I've heard." "Perhaps you've heard the rest of it, then. Has anyone discussed with you Q's reaction to the events around Ohmura's death?" "His suicide attempt was described. If you're speaking of some other reaction--" "I am." "Then assume I know nothing." "Very well." Sekal closed his eyes, apparently marshaling his thoughts. "Three days after Lieutenant Commander Ohmura died, two security officers conspired to ambush Q and beat him savagely. Though Q couldn't identify his attackers personally, he was convinced they were security. Commodore Anderson resisted this interpretation at first; later evidence proved that Q was correct. By then the damage was done. Q became convinced that the humans on the base were involved in a conspiracy to kill him. He approached my wife, T'Meth, begging her to protect him, since he felt he could trust no other security officers. At first T'Meth agreed, as the identity of his attackers was unknown. Once the culprits were discovered and court-martialed, it seemed to T'Meth as if the danger to Q was past. It was highly unlikely, based on her experience with those in her department, that anyone else in security would violate their Starfleet oath in such fashion. "Q disagreed, violently. He feared all of security, was convinced that they were out to kill him, believed that Commodore Anderson was in on the plot, and insisted that T'Meth should remain with him at all times. At this point T'Meth realized he was being irrational and paranoid, and refused to feed his fantasies any longer. She ceased acting as his personal bodyguard. He then decided that she was in on the plot as well. A week later he tried to kill himself." This was an interesting development. "I see." "When Q specifically requested that I not tell any humans of how he had lost control, I suspected he might be growing paranoid again. I felt that perhaps he feared that Counselor Medellin would... use what she knew of him to control him, or some such thing. And it seemed that if I told Medellin, Q would lose any trust in me that he had, as he had lost his trust in my wife a year ago. Whereas if I gave my word that I would not speak to her, he might continue to confide in me. I am no expert on human psychology, but better that he confide in me than that he have no one to talk to at all, and end up suiciding." "Ah." T'Laren nodded. "Did he?" "No. He never spoke of it again." Sekal looked down at the desk. "I studied him for some time after that, looking for further signs of illness. I had given my word I wouldn't speak to Medellin of what he and I had discussed; if new evidence came to light, I would be free to tell her of my suspicions. However, I saw no obvious signs of further deterioration, and I could not very well speak to Medellin on the basis of a 'hunch'. So I believed. And so I kept my word, and my silence, until it was too late." "It is illogical to blame yourself," T'Laren said. "You are not trained to deal with such situations. Your actions were as correct as they could be under the circumstances." "I understand this. But I find that in this case it is difficult to make myself believe it." "Then don't," T'Laren said. "If you cannot eliminate the guilt, accept it and work to do better in the future. Perhaps you should strive to understand human beings a little bit more, so that this situation will likely not occur again." "Yes," Sekal said quietly. "That is..." His expression changed very slightly, the tiny subtleties of what passed for a smile between Vulcans. "Logical." T'Laren stood. "You have assisted me greatly,"she said. "I thank you." "As I thank you for your assistance. Live long and prosper, T'Laren." "Peace and long life, Sekal."