Only Human, Part I: Starbase 56/Enterprise

Commodore Anderson was fond of saying that Starbase 56 was where masochists who enjoyed headaches got themselves stationed. It was true for any of the base's crew, and doubly so for Anderson herself. There were times when she honestly enjoyed her command here, and the challenges that Starbase 56's unique occupant brought with him. Times when she did not kick herself and wonder why she hadn't accepted the promotion to an admiralship on Earth. Times when she felt as if being in command of Starbase 56 was the next best thing to captaining a starship, or perhaps even better.

Now was not one of those times.

She felt the headache coming on, worse than usual, as Lieutenant Veloz's voice came over her comm badge. "Commodore. We have a situation."

No need to ask who the author of the "situation" was. "What's he done this time?" Anderson sighed.

"He's refusing to see the Klingon delegation, sir. Says that they're far too primitive and underevolved to understand anything he might try to teach them."

A particularly sore nerve throbbed behind her left eye. "He said this in front of the Klingons, of course."

"Of course, sir," Veloz agreed.

"Have the Klingons been restrained?"

"The Klingons have shown remarkable forbearance. They merely offered to rip out his spine and strangle him with it."

"What did he say?"

"He just laughed, sir."

"Tell him I'll rip out his spine and strangle him with it." Anderson amused herself a moment by vividly imagining herself doing just that.

"That wouldn't be very good for your blood pressure, sir," Veloz answered dryly.

She took a deep breath. "Right. Belay that last order, Lieutenant. I'll be right down."

Six years ago, the Galaxy-class starship Enterprise, under the command of Captain Jean-Luc Picard, had made first contact with an immortal, omnipotent and extremely arrogant entity called Q, who had put the starship's crew on trial for humanity's crimes. Picard and his crew had managed to persuade Q to rescind his death sentence, but in the process had unfortunately piqued Q's interest. The obnoxious entity had returned several times to torment the Enterprise crew, usually claiming to be acting in the name of his race, the Q Continuum.

It had been difficult for Starfleet analysts to understand why such a vastly powerful and advanced race would send-- or even have-- such a petulant, immature emissary. As it turned out, Starfleet analysts had been right to question. Three years ago, the Q entity had turned up on the Enterprise for the last time, claiming that his race had stripped him of his powers and transformed him into a mortal to punish him for misusing his abilities. He had indeed proven to be indistinguishable from human by any scan known to Federation technology, and in possession of no more power than any human had. It had been decided that he would be relocated to a starbase, where he would give Federation scientists the benefits of his millions of years of accumulated knowledge in exchange for protection from various enemies he'd made in his years as an omnipotent bully.

That was when Anderson's headaches began.

When she'd first been offered the assignment, she'd jumped at the chance. Q represented vast untapped potential for knowledge and exploration. If she had to be confined to a starbase-- and since her spinal injury, it was either a starbase or an Earthbound desk-- she was eager to have it be a starbase that would be a magnet for the Federation's best and brightest. The thought of fighting off numerous aliens bent on revenge hadn't frightened her; she had commanded a starship on the border patrol for the Romulan Neutral Zone, once, and had a great deal of tactical experience. But a chance to talk with an entity who knew all the secrets of the universe, and had promised to reveal them in exchange for protection, had excited her almost as much as the prospect of commanding a starship had, once.

Then she'd actually met Q. He had, in ten minutes, insulted her intelligence, implied that her people were incompetent, started calling her by her first name, and made outrageous demands for his living quarters, as well as complaining about the decor, the ambient temperature of the starbase, and the clothing patterns programmed into his personal uniform replicator. Her headache had never entirely gone away since. And that was before she had to start dealing with the scientists who came to see Q and thought she had some control over his obnoxious behavior. Or with the men and women under her command, who were loyal to a fault, but pushed to the limits of human tolerance by Q's remarkable ability to find and exploit weak points. Anderson lived with the nightmare that she would discover Q dead in his quarters one day, murdered by someone he'd pushed too far, and that she would have to prosecute the poor bastard instead of handing him the medal he'd deserve.

The Klingon delegation accosted her on her way to Q's quarters. "Commodore! A word with you!" one said.

She tried to remember who this one was. Dr. Morakh, that was it. The head of the Klingon Physics Institute, and the unofficial leader of this delegation of scientists. "Dr. Morakh. I'm sorry about--"

"We have waited for six months for an opportunity to speak to this creature about physics. Not to be insulted by him."

"It isn't you, Doctor. He does this to everyone."

"He has agreed to see any allies of the Federation in exchange for his protection. If he refuses to carry out his end of the bargain, I would recommend that the Klingon High Command pressure the Federation into withdrawing that protection, and I would encourage other races to do likewise."

"He will talk to you, Dr. Morakh. I promise. I haven't used up my bag of tricks."

"I sincerely hope so."

"Give us five minutes alone with him," one of the other Klingons suggested, in a tone that promised death. "He will talk to us then."

"I'm afraid I couldn't allow that, as tempting as it sounds. He's too valuable to harm--"

"Oh, we wouldn't harm him," the scientist said, smiling ferally. "It would be dishonorable to harm such a weak, unarmed opponent."

"But you wouldn't have to tell him that, would you?" Anderson murmured. "Very tempting, doctor, but no. Frightening the living daylights out of him might get him to talk, but he won't say anything useful if he's that scared. He'll just whine a lot. No, if you'd all just hang on for an hour or so, I promise you he'll see you."

"We will wait one hour. No more," Morakh said.

Anderson nodded, and headed down the corridor past them.

Q was waiting in the foyer of his suite, with Lieutenant Veloz. Obviously he'd expected her, or he'd still be in the suite proper. With a bright smile, he said, "Commodore Anderson! Come to slum in the gulag with us poor wage slaves?"

When Anderson was feeling sympathetic, she could see how miserable Q was by the ravages time had played on him. Three years seemed to have aged him ten. He was thin and drawn, losing his hair (which he mockingly claimed was because he wanted to be just like his idol Picard), and generally looked like hell. Right now, however, she was feeling anything but sympathetic, and the only thing she noticed about his appearance was his smug smile. "What right did you have to refuse those Klingons, Q?" she demanded.

Q leaned back in his chair, looking bored. "I already explained my reasons. They simply aren't advanced enough to benefit from my knowledge."

"Q--"

"There's an old Earth saying that applies to this situation perfectly. It goes something like this: 'Don't try to teach physics to a gorilla. It only wastes your time and annoys the gorilla.'"

"These particular 'gorillas' have wasted a great deal of time getting to see you. They're going to be a lot more annoyed if you don't teach them."

"It's hardly my fault how evolutionarily unprepared they are." He sat up straight and looked at Anderson with an expression that would have been sincere on anyone else. "Don't get me wrong. Klingons are great if you need beings to beat their mighty thews and charge in where angels fear to tread. All of their evolution has been aimed at making the perfect warriors: strong, tough, violent and unimaginative. Marvelous killing machines, but they're not much on the higher brain functions. I mean, they make you humans look positively advanced, and that's really saying quite a bit."

"Q, your bigotry is not the issue here. The issue--"

"Oh, I wouldn't call it 'bigotry', Eleanor." Anderson did not quite clench her teeth. Q used her first name quite deliberately when he wanted to annoy her. "'Bigotry' implies an irrational, unreasoning prejudice. I did quite a bit of research on the Klingons back when I was omniscient, and I'd say I remember a significant portion of it. I speak of facts, not blind bias."

"Regardless of what you want to call it, those Klingons want to talk to you. It's completely irrelevant whether you think they're capable of understanding you or not. These are Klingon scientists--"

"Now there's an oxymoron if I ever heard one," Q muttered.

"--in good standing, the brightest of their race--"

"Which is rather like saying 'the best-looking Ferengi'."

Anderson ignored him. "--and they want to talk to you. By your agreement with Starfleet, you are bound to talk to anyone Starfleet invites to talk to you."

"And if I don't? What will you do? Throw me to the wolves?"

"Quite frankly, Q, nothing would give me greater joy right now than to toss you out the nearest airlock."

He was completely unfazed by the comment. Either he was positive she wouldn't do it-- which was true enough-- or he simply didn't much care anymore. "Perhaps it would. But you can hardly afford to indulge such fantasies, now can you? I may be the most valuable commodity your precious Federation currently has. You would have lost to the Borg two years ago if not for the information I gave your tacticians and scientists. You wouldn't dare rescind my protection without a much better reason than a few disgruntled Klingons."

Anderson sighed. "I suppose you're right. If you refuse to talk to a few scientists, there really isn't much we can do about it."

"I'm glad you see it my way," Q said, surprised. He was obviously waiting for the other shoe to drop, so Anderson obligingly dropped it. She turned to Lieutenant Veloz.

"Confine Q to his quarters, without computer access, until he agrees to see the Klingons."

Q shook his head. "Oh, no. Not this again. I'm not falling for it this time."

"'Falling for this'? This isn't a bluff, Q." Anderson stood. "Lieutenant--"

Veloz nodded and took Q's arm, pulling him to his feet. Q yanked his arm free. "You can't do this."

"I just did."

"You know perfectly well what confinement without computer access would do to me. My life is tedious enough as it is. You'd make it utterly unbearable."

"I suggest you decide which you find more unbearable-- boredom or talking to Klingons."

"You don't know what you're setting in motion, Eleanor," he warned. "How many times are you going to pull the same trick? It's gotten very tiresome, you know."

"So has your obstructionist behavior. It's my job to make sure the people under my command do their jobs-- and that means you. Now make up your mind. Will you talk to the Klingons, or spend a few weeks staring at the ceiling?"

Q stared at her for several seconds, his expression unreadable. Finally he sighed with excessive boredom. "If it's so important to you, I'll talk to your precious Klingons," he said. "Though I can't guarantee they'll get anything out of it."

"I thought you'd see reason," Anderson said approvingly. She turned to Veloz. "Monitor the conversation. If you think he's being deliberately dense, get Commander Sekal to sit in, and if Sekal thinks he's being deliberately dense, lock him away."

"Yes, sir," Veloz said, with enthusiasm. No doubt the opportunity to lock Q up was one the crew looked forward to eagerly.

Commander Sekal, the head of Starbase 56's Science Division, was one of the few people who could tell the difference between Q genuinely having a hard time expressing a concept in terms his audience could understand, and Q being deliberately obscure. In addition, as a Vulcan he was less vulnerable to Q's unpleasantness than most, and thus could deal with Q even at the entity's worst without losing his temper as most of the humans on the base would. Anderson found him rather cold and aloof personally, as she found most Vulcans, but she felt she owed her sanity to him.

"So how did it go?" she asked.

"It was less unpleasant than I'd have conjectured," Sekal replied, his hands folded neatly in his lap. "Initially he was offensive and obstructionist. When Lieutenant Veloz and I reminded him that he was in danger of losing computer privileges, he claimed that he no longer cared, and that he didn't 'have to put up with any of this'. Lieutenant Veloz proposed that we might leave him with the Klingons for a few minutes, to which he replied that he couldn't care less. At this point, I suggested that if he were truly so apathetic, perhaps he should enter sickbay for a few weeks of observation. That seemed to be effective-- he made a few outraged protests, but calmed down quickly and behaved reasonably afterward."

"Reasonably?" Anderson asked.

"As reasonably as one can expect, from Q. Commodore, I think there may be reason for concern."

"About what?"

"Frankly, Q seemed to give in too easily. He calmed down too quickly-- as if he no longer cared enough to press the issue, which would be unusual for him. I am hardly an expert on human emotions, or Q's emotions for that matter, but I was left with the distinct impression that he is more depressed than usual."

Anderson sighed. "He's always depressed. And he's always taking it out on the rest of us."

"I have reason to believe it has been steadily getting worse."

"I'll have Counselor Medellin talk to him."

"That might be a wise idea."

As Sekal left, Anderson checked on Medellin. The counselor was off-shift right now, relaxing in the rocketball court. It would be a shame to drag her away from her free time to have her talk to Q-- besides, Q was always depressed. It could wait until tomorrow.

She took a deep breath. In an hour or so, she would get to go off-shift herself, at least if no emergencies came up. The day's paperwork was done, the Klingons had left reasonably satisfied, and there were no visitors scheduled for another week or so. Her head didn't even hurt overmuch. Finally, she had time to read her mail and the Starfleet newsbriefs.

Halfway through the newsbriefs, she paused over one item. A query to the main newsbase delivered no more information about the notice than the newsbrief had contained. She stared at the brief for several seconds, trying to decide whether Q's right to hear this outweighed her desire to not deal with him right now. Eventually, she sighed and stood up.

Q was in his suite, sprawled on cushions on the floor and listening to music as he read. He put down the viewer as Anderson entered. "What is it now?" he asked, annoyed. "I was nice to your Klingons."

"This isn't about that. I just got some information I thought you might want to know."

"Really." Q sat up. "Enlighten me."

"I'm afraid that Captain Picard is dead."

Q blinked. "You have an interesting definition of 'want to know', Commodore," he said. "I needed to hear this? I needed to be any more depressed than I already am?"

"Forgive me if I've intruded on your vast self-pity," Anderson said sarcastically, "but I thought you had the right to know." She started to turn toward the door.

"How did it happen?" Q demanded.

Anderson turned back. "It didn't say. Just that he died in the line of duty."

"It was probably something stupid," Q muttered. "Something unworthy of him. He should have taken me up on my offer when I wanted to join his crew, when I still had my powers. I could have protected him..."

"I don't think he wanted your protection."

"Foolish of him. Now he's dead." Q looked away. "Funny. Ever since the incident with the Calamarain, I've thought Jean-Luc would probably outlive me. Silly of me, I suppose... he's been out there in the middle of nowhere, with no protection, while I have an entire starbase dedicated to protecting me... I can't imagine him dead, you know that? It's not as if I haven't seen mortals die before. I've outlived thousands of beings I knew, before. But it comes as a surprise, this time, somehow..."

"I'm sorry," Anderson said. Just when she thought it was safe to despise Q, he showed some signs of having feelings other than his constant self-pity.

He looked at her. "Commodore, I don't often make personal requests..."

He made them all the time, actually-- but no, she knew what he meant. He almost never made requests of any emotional significance. "Go on."

"I'd rather not see any visitors for the next few days, if it's possible."

"I understand." Since he had no visitors scheduled, it wouldn't be difficult to grant him that much. "I think it can be arranged."

After she left, Q walked into the bedroom proper, over to his chest of drawers. He pulled open the top drawer and lifted out a bottle of etching solution. For a minute or so he studied it.

"When I make a decision, you'll be the first to know," he told it, and put it back in the drawer.

The restaurant/lounge was subdued at this hour of the morning; there were enough people that no individual conversation stood out, while not enough for it to be crowded. As Counselor Nian Medellin came in, she had no trouble picking out Q-- he sat by himself at a table by a port, staring out at the stars. She was almost surprised he'd shown up. Medellin had purposely asked to meet him in the lounge because he was too intimidating in home territory, like his quarters. He knew precisely how to use his body language to maximize visitors' discomfort-- or if he didn't know how, he had an amazing unconscious talent for it-- and Medellin was a small woman, while he was a rather tall man. He already had enough of an advantage. She hoped that sitting in a public place, across a table, would protect her enough from his talents at obnoxiousness that she'd be able to help him.

Medellin sat down at the table, across from him. "Would you like to talk about it?"

He didn't look at her, continuing to gaze at the stars. "Talk about what?"

"What's bothering you. Sekal thought you might be more depressed than usual--"

"Sekal, of course, is an expert on human emotion."

"Commodore Anderson agreed with him. Is it the news about Captain Picard?"

"Is what?"

She calmed herself silently. He was hurting, and she was base counselor. It didn't matter how unpleasant he was, she had to help him if she could. "I'm very sorry. I know he defended you when you first came here."

"What makes you think this is about Picard?"

"It's natural to be depressed when you've suffered a loss--"

He turned around. "Oh, you're so unbelievably dense. Do you seriously think I would prostrate myself with grief over Picard? This has nothing to do with him. I can't say I was happy to hear the news that he'd died, but to assume that that's what's bothering me is not only illogical, but arrogant in the extreme. Who are you to tell me why I'm depressed?"

"So you admit that you are depressed."

"Of course I'm depressed! I've been depressed since before I got here! You're a poor excuse for a counselor if you haven't noticed by now, Nian."

"I mean that it's gotten worse lately. It has, hasn't it?"

Q turned up his wrists and looked down at them. There were no scars-- Dr. Li had done his work well. "I've been wondering what the point to mortal existence is," he said, and looked up at her. "Since you're all going to die in the end anyway, why fight so hard to make it later rather than sooner? In the grand scheme of things, mortal lives are meaningless."

"So you believe?"

"So I know. I don't have the luxury of holding grand illusions about the importance of my fate to the universe. I know exactly how much my life is worth this way. Struggle on for another 80 or 90 years and then what? Death anyway. Why not speed things up? What's the point?"

"The point is the happiness we can enjoy while we're still alive."

"Dear me. I thought the point was supposed to be the difference we could make to the universe. Are you advocating wanton hedonism now?"

"Most of us feel more fulfilled when we're doing something that makes a difference. We have friends that care about us, and people whose company we enjoy, and things we want to do in our lives."

He smiled mirthlessly. "You've just argued my point for me, Counselor. I have no reason to go on living."

Medellin cursed inwardly. Q talked about suicide a lot, and had made two somewhat half-hearted attempts, seemingly more to get attention than to seriously do himself in. This might simply be another ploy. But he sounded sincere this time. "That can't be true. Not entirely."

"Believe what you like, Nian, but I know how I feel. There is no one who cares about me, except as a valuable commodity to the Federation; no one whose company I enjoy anymore; and nothing I particularly want to do. And I think you left out the most important reason you humans go on living-- your fear of the unknown. You don't know what death is, and it frightens you-- your typical primitive response to that which you don't know and can't understand."

"I don't think that's primitive. We have every reason to fear something as unknown as death."

"But I do know what death is." He looked down again. "And I'm quite certain that avoiding it is not worth all this."

She tried the tactic that had worked last time. "I thought the Continuum told you that if you stuck it out, they might give you your powers back."

Q laughed bitterly. "I believed that for three years. They simply knew how to push my buttons, that's all. I don't seriously believe they ever meant that, now. They won't forgive me."

"You don't know that. What if they were planning on giving it back to you soon, and you kill yourself? You'd be cutting yourself off from immortality."

"And what if they're waiting for me to get tired of their silly game and opt out of it before they give it back? Don't try to second-guess them, Nian. You're only human. Even I wouldn't presume to guess what they're doing anymore, and I used to know them as well as I knew myself."

"You enjoy some things, don't you? You've collected all those antiques from Earth--"

He smirked. "Those were primarily valuable in that it amused me to watch you all scrambling to get them for me. Do you seriously think material toys can keep me happy? You really are a terrible counselor, aren't you?"

"I don't often have patients as determined to be unhappy as you are."

"I'm not determined to be unhappy. It just worked out that way. I'm simply not cut out for living as a human."

"You deny yourself the potential of human life. In all the time you've been here, you've never set foot on a planet, never used the holodeck or any other recreational equipment, had no sexual contact with anyone--"

He grimaced. "Oh, please. I just ate."

"Why do you consider sex so disgusting? It's only a human biological function, like eating and sleeping. There's nothing inherently disgusting about it-- or there shouldn't be, to one who didn't grow up under a repressive moral system."

"I think you fail to understand. Eating and sleeping are disgusting. I perform them because I have no choice. I can't keep myself awake indefinitely and if I stopped eating, you'd just force-feed me. But I won't go out of my way to experience a vile human biological function if I don't have to, and sex is not a requirement for human existence."

"Some would say it's a requirement for happy human existence."

"Most of Earth's Orthodox Catholic priests would disagree. Besides, leaving aside the repulsiveness of the act and how silly it looks, who would have me? Don't think I don't know about the opinion people on this station hold of me. Or are you suggesting that you or someone responsible for my welfare would provide me a partner, for the sake of my mental health?" He shook his head. "Even if I wanted it, I wouldn't want it on those terms."

"What about the holodeck?"

"For sex? You are disgusting."

"I meant in general. You never use it, or any of the other recreational facilities."

"What would I use it for? To play for a brief moment at being a god comes a very poor second to actually being one. And the holodeck can't free me from the limitations of this shell. It can only give me what my human senses can perceive. Why can't you understand that the biological facts of my existence are appalling to me? You think I should be glad to be alive, whatever the price. Suppose you were blind, deaf, crippled and confined to a bed. All your sensory knowledge of the world must come in through touch, and you must depend on others to touch you, others who don't even like you. Would you be glad to be alive?"

Medellin shook her head. "You're being self-pitying again, Q. Your situation is not nearly that bad."

"Compared to what I had before? It's worse."

"You can't dwell on the past! It doesn't matter what you had before. What matters is what you are now." She leaned forward. "I agree with you that your lack of friends is a problem, but don't you realize you've done that to yourself? We were ready to welcome you with open arms when you first came, and you antagonized everyone. I think what you need is a vacation."

"Excuse me?" He stared at her as if she had suddenly sprouted an extra head.

"I mean it. Not for very long; we couldn't take the risk that your enemies would track you down away from the safety of the base. But an opportunity to meet new people, and possibly not antagonize them immediately this time; to get out of your routine, maybe find something that you do enjoy doing. From the amounts you've read since you came here, I assume you like to learn new things."

"Nothing I learn is new," he said, scowling. "I used to know everything. I've just forgotten most of it."

"Well, then you enjoy relearning things. Don't you?"

"I suppose so. Inasmuch as I enjoy anything."

"Well, I think that's it. Travel, new experiences, new people-- you're too good at antagonizing people for me to believe it's anything but deliberate. If you really wanted to make friends, I think you could. Maybe you could go to Earth. I know you have an interest in Earth history."

"Hardly an interest. I was engaged in the study of humans and their history when I was condemned. Since the knowledge was uppermost in my mind, I remembered most of it."

"Whatever it is. Would you like to go to Earth?"

He sighed. "You won't stop hounding me, will you? Certainly. Schedule a vacation for me. Send me to Earth. I'm sure it's exactly what I need and will solve all my silly problems."

"You don't need to be sarcastic. Just think of it this way. What have you got to lose?"

"Nothing," he said soberly. "Nothing at all."

"All right." Medellin stood up. "I'll talk to the Commodore about it; it might take a few days to schedule. Just hang on, okay? Things aren't as bad as you think they are." She smiled winningly at him. Q stared at her, then shrugged and half-smiled back. Medellin nodded and left the lounge.

Q watched her go, his smile widening and becoming bitter, mocking. Let her entertain herself trying to stave off the inevitable. It was already too late.

He stood up, pushing aside his chair, and walked out of the lounge.

In his quarters, he took the bottle of etching solution out of the drawer again and held it up to the light, popping off the cap. The solution inside was colorless, resembling water. But the strong acidic smell that wafted up from inside spoke of something far harsher to flesh than water would be.

No voices spoke in his head. No flash of light heralded a visitor. He hadn't really expected anything like that, but even still, a tiny shred of hope died in the silence around him.

When they'd first made the decision, he had been shocked, horrified, disbelieving. Not in the sense that he believed they were lying, or that it wasn't going to happen; he was still part of them at that time. He knew they meant it. But he couldn't understand how they could do such a thing to him. Condemnation to mortality was nothing but a sentence to a slow and agonizing death. What had he done to deserve this? Had he been human already, he would have pleaded with them, begged, demanded to know why. At the time, though, he was still Q, and knew better. He accepted the decision numbly, unquestioning, knowing there was nothing he could do to alter his fate.

They asked him to choose what species of mortal he would be, and where in the physical universe he wanted to be. He had only a fraction of a second to decide, but for a Q that was long enough to consider several options. Briefly he toyed with becoming a non-sentient animal. Without sentience, he wouldn't be able to hold to his memories long; he would become that animal, and forget he had ever been anything better. But he didn't want to forget, and besides, without that animal's instinctive knowledge he'd be dead very shortly. He needed a sentient race that would accept him, that would teach him how to be one of them. It had to be one he had a great deal of personal experience with, because no mortal brain could retain the memories of omniscience; he wouldn't remember what he'd known through the totality of the Q Continuum, only what he had personal knowledge of, and little enough of that. Unfortunately most of the sentient races that he knew personally knew him personally-- he wouldn't survive long among them. Humans were one of his current pet projects, and he believed he could talk Picard into protecting and guiding him, despite the unpleasantnesses he'd inflicted on the man. So he'd asked to be human, and to be sent to the bridge of the Enterprise.

By vast coincidence, or perhaps someone's idea of an evil practical joke, he had shown up during the middle of a crisis that the mortals aboard Enterprise had no explanation for. A moon was falling out of orbit, to crash on an inhabited world, and Picard was convinced Q was the cause. It took hours, and a great deal of humiliation, to convince the Enterprise crew that he was as powerless as he claimed, and had nothing to do with the moon's fall.

Around that time, one of the races he'd expected to come after him had shown up. The Calamarain were an energy-based lifeform, very sophisticated as lower creatures went. They had the power to determine what had happened to him and to track him down (or had someone helped them with that? Q had enemies within the Continuum as well). Twice they assaulted him, despite the Enterprise's attempt to protect him. Q had not truly thought out the implications of mortality before. Certainly he'd known that he could now die, but he hadn't really understood it until the Calamarain's ionized tachyon plasma field first started draining his life.

By that time, he had been thrown in a brig, experienced the terror of falling asleep and the pain of hunger, not to mention being tormented by an old enemy aboard the Enterprise itself. He had been humiliated numerous times, forced to perform menial tasks, and realized how much more unpleasant mortals' dislike of him was when he was on their level. The second time the Calamarain attacked, the android Data had saved Q at risk to his own life, and Q had started to feel ashamed. After all, his own people, who knew him completely, had thought him worthy only of mortality and death. He was not happy, nor making anyone else happy, nor serving any purpose with his continued existence at all. He was terrified of everything, and miserable, and lonely, and he couldn't imagine bearing this state of affairs for any length of time.

To make matters worse, the Calamarain were inevitably going to destroy the Enterprise to get to him. The Enterprise would be able to hold up against them if it abandoned Bre'el IV to its fate and fought, and it would be safe from the Calamarain if Picard tossed Q out the airlock, but Picard would do neither. Picard was incapable of making such ruthless choices, Q thought. He would try desperately to save both Q and the planet, and doom both and his ship as well. And Q could no longer allow that to happen.

So he'd stolen a shuttlecraft and gone out to meet the Calamarain, taking the decision out of Picard's hands. He had been utterly terrified, of course. He was miserably unhappy as a human, but even still he didn't really want to face death, and more importantly, he didn't want to face pain. The execution method the Calamarain would use would give neither a quick death nor a painless one. But he couldn't see the sense in seeing people who wanted to live, people who had gone out of their way to protect him, die so he could prolong an existence he hated.

As the shuttle headed outward, a transmission came in from the Enterprise-- Picard. "Shuttle occupant, identify yourself."

He turned on the comlink. "Don't try to talk me out of it, Jean-Luc."

"Return to the ship immediately!"

Q almost wanted to laugh. Did Picard think he would do it just because Picard told him to? "I just can't get used to following orders."

Behind Picard, on the viewscreen, he saw Worf, saying, "The plasma cloud is moving toward the shuttlecraft."

Well, of course it was. Didn't they understand what he was doing here? "It's easier this way," he told them. "They won't bother you after I'm gone."

Next to Picard, Riker said, "Engineering, prepare to extend shields," and Q felt a spike of genuine anger, as well as a bit of surprising gratitude. Riker was more ruthless, more adaptable than Picard, and had somewhat more reason to dislike Q-- and he couldn't make the necessary choice either? Couldn't any of them see that this was the only way? "Please, don't fall back on your tired cliché of charging to the rescue just in the nick of time," he snapped. If their compassion drove them to such stupidity, perhaps he could bring them to their senses by making them think this was the compassionate thing to do. "I don't want to be rescued. My life as a human being has been a dismal failure. Perhaps my death will have a little dignity."

"Q, there is no dignity in this suicide!" Picard shouted.

Q experienced a sensation he didn't understand-- a tightening of the throat, a pain in his chest. Picard didn't understand. After all this, Picard still didn't understand. "Yes, I suppose you're right," he said, bitter self-pity welling up. "Death of a coward then, so be it. But as a human-- I would have died of boredom."

He cut the transmission and ignored the Enterprise's attempts to re-establish contact. Despite his experience at observing mortal death, he had never thought about it from this end before-- he wondered if the experience would seem very different, now that it was actually happening to him.

Then he felt a faint, inexplicable dizziness, and saw the walls of the shuttle bay around him instead of stars. He had been transported back into the Enterprise.

The controls were frozen. Nothing responded. Furiously, Q stormed out of the shuttlecraft, out of the bay, and ran directly into Picard, Worf, Troi and Riker. Before they could say anything, he laid into them. "How dare you interfere like this?" he demanded. "I told you I didn't want to be rescued. There was only one way my human existence could have had a point, and you just deprived me of that! What gives you the right to dictate my life?"

"You mean, what gives us the right to transport you somewhere against your will, demand that you obey us or punish you with unpleasant consequences, and interfere with your right to do as you wish?" Picard asked.

"Exactly," Q snapped, and then realized the trap he'd just fallen into.

Picard merely looked at him. Q glared at the four of them-- everyone except for Picard seemed to be wearing a smug smirk. "This is unfair and hypocritical, Picard. You're the one that kept telling me that the power to do something is no excuse for doing it."

"And so it isn't. Protestations that we are being unfair are a bit hollow, however, coming from you."

"After all, Q, fairness is such a human concept," Riker said. "Think imaginatively."

Q ignored Riker's dig. "You don't understand! You're so marvelously compassionate, Picard. So full of respect for all life, even mine. Weren't you going to say something like that? Well, if you don't make some hard choices and sacrifice someone, you're going to destroy everyone. You can't protect your precious Bre'el IV, your ship, and me at the same time. And it makes far more sense to sacrifice me than a ship or a planet. Even you must be able to see that."

"Much as I dislike agreeing with him, sir, he has a point," Worf said. "We cannot fight off attacks by the Calamarain and save Bre'el IV."

"You see? I knew if I argued that I ought to die, Worf, at least, would be on my side."

"Perhaps you're right," Picard said. "Perhaps it will become necessary to sacrifice you. If so, I'll keep in mind that you've volunteered." He looked as if he couldn't quite believe it. "But we have not yet exhausted all the possibilities. Until then, I cannot simply allow you to destroy yourself--"

"Then you're a fool!"

At that point Picard's badge bleeped. "Bridge to Picard."

"Picard here."

"Sir, the Calamarain has vanished. In a bright flash of light."

All eyes turned on Q. "So you have no powers," Picard said softly. "You can't stop the fall of the moon. You are forced to nobly sacrifice yourself for the good of the ship." His voice harshened. "I almost believed you."

"What do you mean, 'almost'? It's true!"

"What did you do with the Calamarain, Q?" Riker demanded.

"I didn't do anything! You think I did that?"

"In our experience, things rarely disappear in a bright flash of light unless you are somehow involved," Picard said.

"I didn't do it! Look, if this was a charade-- and I don't know why you insist on believing it is; I assure you if I had my powers I would never humiliate myself so consistently and so long for the sake of a mere game-- but if it was, why would I wreck everything by displaying my powers so openly? If I had had my powers, and I wanted the Calamarain to leave, I'd have banished it more subtly than that."

"You aren't known for your subtlety, Q," Riker said.

"I'm not known for keeping up an act this long, either," Q snapped. "You believe I'd go to all this trouble and then make the Calamarain vanish in front of you? Credit me with at least as much intelligence as you yourself have!"

"Captain," Troi began, "I believe he's telling--"

"Now, folks, let's try not to be closed-minded here," a voice behind him said, interrupting Troi.

Q whipped around. The being that stood 3 meters away, next to the bulkhead, was wearing an unfamiliar form, a blond man dressed in the same disgusting gray and green jumpsuit Q himself had been forced to wear. But Q recognized him immediately. "Q!" he cried, hopefully. Did this mean the Continuum had reconsidered? "What are you doing here?"

Picard glanced at them both. "This is-- one of your race, Q?"

"Guilty as charged," the other Q said to Picard, and turned back to Q. "I've been keeping track of you."

"I always thought you were in my corner."

The other Q shook his head, laughing. "No, no. Actually, I was the one that got you kicked out."

As Q's eyes widened in shock, Picard said, "Am I to take it that you are responsible for the disappearance of the Calamarain?"

"Of course I was. You really should have guessed it was one of us, Captain-- Q may be dumb, but like he pointed out, he's not that dumb."

"And are you also responsible for the fall of the Bre'el satellite?" Picard's voice was ice cold.

"Don't be silly. What do you take me for? Him?" The other Q's voice sharpened as he turned to Q. "You know you're incorrigible, Q, you're a lost cause, I can't go to a single solar system--" He gestured with his hands, appeared to notice he was doing so, and trailed off slightly, distracted by the study of his hands. "--without having to... apologize... for you..." He dropped his hands and glared at Q. "And I'm tired of it!"

"I wasn't the one who managed to misplace the entire Deltivid asteroid belt."

"Hey! This isn't about me. I've got better places to be. But someone had to keep an eye on you, to make sure you didn't cause trouble... even as a member of this, mmm... limited... species."

"Well, if that's how you feel, why did you send the Calamarain away?"

The other Q ignored him and turned to the Enterprise crew. "I've got to admit you guys are pretty impressive, as lower species go. I can see what he sees in you. After all the stuff he did to you, you still went out of your way to keep him safe-- even to the point of risking yourselves. That's amazing. There's a lot of more advanced species that wouldn't think of it. You guys are on the right track."

Troi said, "Q implied that he-- and by extension, all of you-- believed compassion a weakness."

"You have to ignore 90% of everything Q says. We always did."

"Then he was never sent by the Continuum to test us?" Picard asked.

"You haven't answered my question!" Q interrupted. "If you have such a low opinion of me, why did you save me?"

"Well. You were about to get yourself killed to save these humans. Seemed to me like a bit of a selfless act."

"You flatter me. I was merely trying to put a quick end to a miserable existence."

"Yeah, I know. Don't try to mislead me, Q, you couldn't do it before and you sure as hell can't do it now." He vanished and reappeared next to Q, leaning to speak directly in his ear. "You and I both know," he said softly, "that the Calamarain would have destroyed the Enterprise to get to you. And that's really why you did it. Wasn't it?"

Q's mouth quirked into a smile. He began to hope again. "It was a teeny bit selfless, wasn't it."

"There, you see!" The other Q stepped back and threw his hands in the air. "I couldn't go back to the Continuum and tell them you committed a selfless act just before the end! If I did, there'd be questions, there'd be explanations, for centuries!"

Riker said slowly, "You saved his life just so you wouldn't have to explain to your superiors how he died?"

"Hey, if you think human bureaucracy is bad, you should have to sit through a meeting of the Continuum. You were lucky to escape, believe me. Besides, it wouldn't be how he died, it'd be the fact that I let him die after he demonstrated a chance at redemption." He turned back to Q. "I thought about giving you back your powers."

Q's heart lurched. He wouldn't have phrased it that way if there was any hope. "And?" he asked, trying to sound casual.

"And no go. The others aren't convinced you've done enough to deserve it."

Q swallowed, staring straight ahead. "I see."

"No, you don't. See, you're a screw-up, Q. You go out to study some new race and you can't resist the temptation to interfere with them, to lower yourself to their level. We've warned you and warned you and you still keep doing it. And you don't even do it right. Any of us could have told you that making a human a Q wouldn't have taught us diddly-squat about humans." He jerked a thumb at Riker. "By the time he was really Q, he wouldn't have anything in common with humanity anymore-- and the species might be extinct by then."

"I don't understand," Riker said. "Was it a genuine offer or was he only playing with me?"

"Well, both," the other Q said. "You'd have been Q, all right-- the youngest of our infants. It would have been at least a few thousand years, more like a few hundred thousand, before you'd have become a full Q, on a par with him and the rest of us. And it'd be several million years before you'd be considered mature. This guy here hasn't even gotten that far."

"It seemed like a good idea at the time," Q said. "If you all objected so strongly, why didn't anyone stop me then?"

"We did, after you'd screwed it up. But that's beside the point. Look. Now you've got me and some of the others interested in humanity. And we've figured a much better way to understand them. Rather than make a human a Q, we'll take the opportunity you gave us, and make a Q a human. After all, you we know. We can monitor you and observe how you change as you become more human, and that'll tell us loads more about the human condition than incepting a human would have. So studying humanity's still your assignment. You've just got a different perspective now."

Q stared at his former comrade. "Q, I don't believe your unmitigated arrogance! The complete gall of you people! You throw me out, condemn me to this-- this fragile, feeble existence-- and you still expect me to work for you? To help you?"

"Of course," the other Q said simply. "No matter how human you become, you'll always be Q. You'll help us whether you want to or not. Besides, play your cards right and maybe we'll change our minds about reinstating you. It's up to you."

"Then-- it's not certain. You still might take me back."

"That's what I just said, isn't it?"

"Are you going to leave him here?" Picard asked.

"I'll tell you what. You didn't ask for this, after all. We'll protect him against anything too major for you humans to handle-- for instance, if the Ayathieri came gunning in person, you'd be up a creek. Anything like that, we'll take care of. It's up to you guys whether or not you protect him from lesser threats, the kind you can handle, like our friend the Calamarain. Or for that matter whether you dump him out the airlock. We're not going to lift a finger to protect him from lesser threats-- if you guys want to mistreat him, that's your business. We won't interfere. Or let him come back to get revenge, if he does get reinstated. After all, it wouldn't be a good test of the human condition if he had guardian angels hovering around, would it?"

"I suppose not," Picard said. "How can we be certain we can trust you, though?"

"See what I have to deal with because of you?" the other Q demanded of Q. "No one who's met you trusts me."

"I'm awfully sorry. Would you like me to flagellate myself into the bargain?" Q asked with bitter sarcasm.

"Hey, if you want to. I'm sure a whole bunch of us would enjoy watching." The other Q turned back to Picard. "We aren't all like this specimen, believe me. Otherwise we wouldn't have thrown him out."

"It would help if we knew a bit more about the Continuum and its motives in all this. As you've implied, we can hardly trust Q's word."

"Well, you can trust it better now." He glanced over at Q. "You hear me? No more lies about the Continuum. It's making us look bad."

He was about to leave. Q swallowed his pride. "Wait. Before you go?"

"Yeah?"

"I wouldn't ordinarily ask, but since you're in the neighborhood anyway-- and I know it wouldn't be any effort for you-- and they've lost a lot of time to this little conversation--"

"You want me to fix the moon for them."

"If you would."

The other Q scowled. "You know we're not supposed to do stuff like that. If we do, then they get dependent on it, and they don't solve their own problems--"

"They've have solved it long ago if we hadn't interfered. You know that."

"You mean if you hadn't interfered."

"Well, you let me! That makes it your problem. You didn't have to send me to the Enterprise in the middle of a crisis, you know. You could have arranged for me to arrive a few days later. But no."

The other Q sighed. "Okay, fine. But don't ask me for anything else. This is positively the last time, you understand?"

"Completely."

"And you asking this isn't winning you any brownie points, you know."

"Do you have to be so incredibly suspicious? Read my mind, Q. Am I asking for brownie points? Is that what your omniscience tells you?"

"That's what me knowing you tells me." The other Q studied Q a moment. "You really are serious. Maybe there's hope for you yet."

"Yeah, well, don't tell the others or my reputation will be shot."

The other Q grinned. "All right then. Try and stay out of trouble?"

He vanished in a characteristic burst of light as Picard's badge bleeped again. "Bridge, sir. We have an incoming transmission from Bre'el IV science station."

"I'll take it in my ready room in two minutes." He looked at Q. "It appears-- for the moment-- that we're stuck with you."

"I wouldn't phrase it that--"

Abruptly he felt a wave of dizziness. He swayed, and his vision dimmed. Troi caught his elbow. "Q! What's wrong?"

"I'm... not sure." He leaned against the wall, getting his equilibrium back. "I feel..."

"Dizzy?"

"Yes, exactly. Dizzy. And-- and hollow, somehow. Does that make any sense?"

"When did you last eat?"

"I didn't."

"Counselor, get Q something to eat," Picard said. "You're assigned to him until Data recovers. Number One, Mr. Worf, report to the bridge. I'll be headed for my ready room."

Everyone nodded and headed off their separate ways. Troi frowned slightly. "I thought Data took you to Ten-Forward and got you something to eat."

"He did. I was going to have chocolate sundaes. But the Calamarain attacked, and I lost my appetite. Are you sure I need to eat and I'm not coming down with a disease of some sort? Or falling asleep again? This doesn't feel the same way hunger did before."

"Well, your body could be reacting to the Calamarain attacks. But I think it's more likely an adrenaline reaction, compounded by the fact that you haven't eaten. Your blood sugar's probably low, after all that excitement. If you still feel ill after you've eaten, I'll take you to sickbay."

She started forward. Q followed. "Are we going to Ten-Forward?"

"Yes."

"Can we go when Guinan's not there?"

Troi looked back at him and smiled. "That's right. I forgot you and Guinan have a history."

Q felt a surge of remembered outrage. "She's a dangerous creature! I can't understand why Picard allows her to roam free on his ship. When I went to Ten-Forward before, she stabbed me!"

"You don't look hurt," Troi observed.

"She stabbed me with a fork, in the hand. I was actually bleeding. They fixed it at sickbay, after the Calamarain attacked."

"I see," Troi said, still smiling. "Well, Guinan will leave you alone if I ask her to."

"That's why I couldn't eat. I ordered ten chocolate sundaes and I couldn't eat any of them because she made me so angry I lost my appetite. Then the Calamarain attacked, and I just never had any time."

"Wait a minute. You ordered ten chocolate sundaes?"

"Data said that you said that eating chocolate was good for a depression. And I was utterly miserable."

Troi began to laugh. Q glared at her. "What are you laughing at?"

"Q, you don't eat ten chocolate sundaes!" She controlled herself. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't laugh at you."

"You're certainly right you shouldn't. Why can't I eat ten chocolate sundaes?"

"It would make you sick! One, maybe two-- if that was your only meal I could even see three. But not ten, Q. You'd never have been able to finish them all." She shook her head, smiling wryly. "I suppose that's the down side to having Data take care of you. He doesn't know things like that either."

"Well, how many does it take to cure a depression?"

Troi shook her head. "In the first place, while chocolate makes me feel better when I'm sad, it won't necessarily help you. Different people react differently to food. You might not even like chocolate-- though I think you will. Most humans do. But in the second place, it's not a magic cure-all. I can sense quite how badly you feel, Q. If I were that unhappy, chocolate might make me feel a little bit better, but it wouldn't make my hurt go away. You can't expect a chocolate sundae to solve all your problems."

"I wasn't expecting it to solve all my problems. I'd settle for temporarily forgetting about them, though."

They arrived at Ten-Forward. Guinan was visible behind the bar, and Q flinched slightly, stepping behind Troi a bit. "Are you sure we can't go at a later time?" he asked nervously.

"You need something to eat now. Don't worry. I promise Guinan will leave you alone." They walked over to the counter furthest from Guinan. Q saw a look pass between the two women, and felt a sudden sense of panic. Maybe they were conspiring against him. Troi was going to set him up to relax and think he was safe and then Guinan would ambush him. He wasn't really afraid of her using her special abilities on him, not really; she had been awfully reluctant to use them against him when he was at full power, and she certainly wouldn't need them now. But he was well aware of how fragile his body was, now. She could hurt him in a million different ways.

"Q, calm down," Troi said. "No one is going to hurt you."

"Then what were you looking at Guinan for? I saw you. You were telling her something, weren't you."

"I'm not a telepath."

"You don't need to be! You were saying something with that look, I know you were."

"I was, as a matter of fact. I was signaling her to leave us alone." Troi shook her head. "You're feeling paranoid, Q. There's no need for it. I promise you, no one in Ten-Forward will hurt you."

"Are you sure? You can't control Guinan, you know. She'll do whatever she wants. She's not reasonable."

"I think you're describing yourself better than Guinan. Whatever history the two of you have, Guinan is my friend. She won't interfere with one of my patients if I ask her not to. Now please. Relax. No one will hurt you."

Despite himself, he found himself believing her. He took a deep breath and tried to relax. This constant fear was wearying and unpleasant-- he had to try to be less of a coward, or he'd die of exhaustion. "All right. I'll try to calm down."

"I know it's hard for you." Troi put a hand on his arm, obviously trying to comfort him. The gesture itself meant nothing to him, but oddly enough, he was slightly comforted by the fact that she'd thought to make the gesture. "You're not used to being vulnerable to anything, and you're not sure what can threaten you now, so you're jumping at shadows. But you do have to calm down, or you'll make yourself sick."

"What should I get to eat, then? Since you're the expert."

The waitress approached. Troi leaned forward. "We'll have baked minea fish, lightly braised in butter; a dish of mixed vegetables cooked in bouillon broth; mashed potatoes, lightly buttered and well-whipped; a glass of water; a glass of chocolate milk, no lactose; and two chocolate sundaes, to be brought with the rest of it. The temperature of the hot food should be mild."

The waitress nodded and left. "So you think two chocolate sundaes is all right, then?" Q asked.

"You're only getting one. The other one's for me."

"Why can't I have two chocolate sundaes? I need it more than you."

Troi sighed. "Q, have you ever heard of the Earth saying 'Your eyes are bigger than your stomach'?"

"It doesn't ring a bell. I don't know everything anymore, you know."

"I didn't expect you to. My father always used to say that to me. It's a human expression for when a child doesn't understand the limits of his own capacity for food, and asks for a lot more than he can eat. You have the same problem. You have no idea what your capacity is. And right now, I think it would be better for you to not get enough to eat, and feel a little hungry, than to eat too much and get sick."

"The prospect doesn't sound awfully appealing, I admit." Q propped up his head on his hand. "It seems like there are dozens of things that can make me sick."

"There are. You'll have to be careful in testing your limits, the first few days. That's why I ordered what I did for you."

"Why?"

"The food I ordered is very mild. Some would think it bland to the point of tastelessness. But I'd rather you ate something nutritious and boring than that you ate something that you hated violently, or that you were allergic to."

"Allergic? I might be allergic to food? No one told me this."

"We don't know. You'll have to go carefully the first few days, as I said."

Q shook his head in disbelief. "It's just one thing after another."

The food arrived. It smelled quite pleasant, which was a plus-- Q didn't think he could stomach food that smelled bad. The whole notion of putting dead organic matter in his mouth was slightly disgusting anyway. As he smelled the food, he abruptly felt the return of the sensation he'd first identified as hunger-- gnawing emptiness and odd noises in his abdominal region. He picked up one of the utensils awkwardly. It was a fork. "What should I start with?"

"Begin with the hot food," Troi advised. "It'll get cold faster than the ice cream will melt."

"How am I supposed to use this?"

Troi took the fork from his hand and demonstrated. "Spoons are much the same, but you scoop with them instead of spearing. The fork is for the hot food, and you use the spoon for the ice cream."

"Fine." He speared a piece of fish, somewhat awkwardly, and ate it. It was quite pleasant, actually. He had imitated the act of eating before, to experience taste, but he had never before felt this sense of intense satisfaction at consuming food. His body instinctively knew what it needed, and rewarded him for supplying it. "This isn't as bad as I thought."

"I'm glad to hear it," Troi said, digging into her ice cream sundae.

Q tried bites of all the items on his plate. He found the mashed potatoes soothing, the vegetables somewhat bland and mushy, and the ice cream sundae delicious. Quickly he ignored the rest of his food and began to devour the sundae, smiling. "You were right. This is quite good."

"Don't eat so fast. You'll get a headache."

That seemed like a ludicrous notion to Q. There was no way that he could see that eating quickly could possibly result in a headache. This sounded like an old wives' tale, on the order of parents telling their children not to stick their hands out the windows of aircars or the hands would be ripped off. Q knew for a fact that no child had ever had his hand ripped off simply by sticking it out the aircar window, and he doubted anyone ever got a headache from eating too fast. He was probably violating some ridiculous cultural taboo, not that he cared. Ignoring Troi, he continued to wolf down the ice cream.

To his great surprise, an agonizing pain stabbed through his head. Q gasped and dropped his spoon. Troi looked concerned. "What's wrong?"

"My head," he said. He looked at Troi disbelievingly. "You were right. That's ridiculous. How can eating quickly give you a headache?"

"I don't know what the physics of it is," Troi said. "But when I give you a suggestion, perhaps next time you might consider following it, instead of deciding you know best."

Q tried to take another bite of the ice cream. The pain came back. "How do I finish this without hurting myself?" he asked miserably.

"Take a break. Eat the rest of your meal. It'll warm you up."

Q took a few half-hearted bites of his food. It was less tasty now. What he really wanted was the sundae. He studied it morosely. "Well, this was a useless remedy. I'm still depressed."

Troi sighed. "I told you it's not a panacea. Besides, you enjoyed it, didn't you?"

"Well, yes. Until my head exploded."

"Then it showed you that there are some benefits to being mortal after all. So you couldn't call it a total loss, could you?"

Reluctantly Q nodded. "I suppose so."

Troi's badge bleeped. She touched it. "Troi here."

"This is Picard. Counselor, are you still with Q?"

"Yes."

"When he's done with his meal, I'd like to see him in my ready room."

Q started to stand up. Troi motioned him back down again. "Acknowledged, Captain." She turned to Q. "He said you could finish dinner first."

"I want to get it over with."

"Finish your food. The captain hardly wants you to starve."

The food was significantly cooler, and had even less taste now. If he hadn't still been so hungry, he wouldn't be able to force it down. "Let me ask you a question, Counselor."

"Go right ahead."

"Why are you being nice to me?" She blinked at him. He continued. "I could understand Data-- he doesn't dislike me, since he can't feel any emotion. You, however, I have to presume probably dislike me as much as anyone else aboard this ship. Why are you going out of your way to explain things to me, and comfort me, and all that sort of thing?"

She shrugged. "It's my job. If I couldn't put aside my personal feelings for someone to help them, I wouldn't be a very good counselor."

"One could wish Picard and Riker saw things that way."

"Captain Picard and Commander Riker aren't ship's counselors. It's my job to ensure the morale of everyone aboard this ship, including you."

"Do you feel any qualms? Desire for revenge, outraged justice, the like?"

"No. You have to understand, Betazoid 'justice' is very different from human. We don't believe in punishing people in order to try to redress some cosmic balance; two hurts don't cancel each other out. On Betazed, we prevent criminals from committing crimes again, but we also do our best to make them see why what they did was wrong and how to correct themselves in the future. Since you've been stripped of your powers, you can't commit crimes against us again. So now our task is to rehabilitate you."

Q laughed. "That's ridiculous."

"How so?"

"Do you expect that anything you could do to me in a human lifetime could balance out millions of years?"

"Yes. I do." Troi leaned forward. "Q, we don't grow unless we're challenged. Faced with adversity. You haven't had any reason to change in all those millions of years, since you were never faced with adversity. Now, you have a much greater opportunity for learning experiences. You're likely to change more in the next five years than you did in centuries of omnipotence. And I think that's very valuable. I think this experience will be good for you."

"Hardly, if I die of it."

"I suppose that's true. But that gives you a risk-- something to work toward and something to lose if you fail. If your Continuum does take you back, you will probably be a very different person. That's what I'm looking at when I'm dealing with you-- not the spoiled, petulant godling who tormented us, but the potential to grow into a decent human being."

"I have a hard time appreciating your point of view." He pushed aside his plate, empty. "And I don't think I'll ever be able to cut it as a human being."

"Perhaps you're underestimating yourself." She smiled. "For once."

"I doubt it."

"It's not that hard to be mortal."

"Maybe not for you. I have several million years of habits to unlearn."

"If you stay aboard the Enterprise, I'll help you with it. You might be surprised at what you can adapt to."

"If I ever adapt to this, I will be very surprised." Q stood up. "I'd better go see what Picard wants."

"I'll go with you." Troi got up.

"That isn't necessary. I know the way from here."

"I know you do, but he left me in charge of you. I think the captain would prefer you didn't go anywhere without an escort."

Q smiled thinly. "What, is he afraid I'll steal another shuttlecraft?"

"It's standard procedure for guests to the Enterprise to have escorts."

"Whatever." He sighed as he walked out of Ten-Forward. "Theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do and die."

Troi, thankfully, stayed outside Picard's ready room as Q entered, feeling slightly as if he were walking into the jaws of a large and hungry beast. "You asked to see me, mon capitaine?"

"Sit down," Picard said, motioning at a chair. Q did so, somewhat nervously. Picard studied him for several moments, generating an uncomfortable silence. Finally, when Q was about to say something, anything, to break the silence, Picard said, "It appears I may have misjudged you."

"Probably," Q said. "But I won't hold it against you, Jean-Luc."

Picard looked exasperated momentarily, but controlled it well. "Before today-- before an hour or so ago-- I would have said that you were entirely selfish, incapable of inconveniencing yourself for another's sake, let alone capable of self-sacrifice. I still find it somewhat hard to believe that you were willing to die for us. Perhaps there's a little more-- humanity-- in you than I would have thought."

"There's no need to be insulting."

"It was not intended to be insulting. As you well know."

Q looked away. "Yes. I know."

"Did you believe the others would intercede for you? That they would take you back if you committed a selfless act?"

"If I had, it would hardly have been selfless, would it?" Q turned on Picard. "You know, I resent your implications here. You don't know me. You know nothing about me. Except for the past twenty hours or so, all you've seen of me is what I chose to show you, and on that basis you make judgments about what I'm capable of? You don't know what I'm capable of. I do understand the concept of guilt, you know. And the concept of the good of the many outweighing the good of the few. Those things are hardly unknown to the Q."

"I have wondered if you possess a moral sense at all. When you first came here, you leveled accusations against us that almost precisely corresponded to what you yourself were doing. You claimed that we were a savage race who made prejudgments on the basis of little or no understanding, demonstrating that you yourself did exactly that. Now I am left with the impression that you were never sent with the authority of your Continuum at all. That they in fact disapproved of your behavior and have disapproved for some time."

"I can see where you'd get that impression."

"Everything you have told us about them is a lie, isn't it?"

"Hardly everything. It's true they kicked me out. You can see that for yourself."

"When you last came here, you told us that you had been exiled from the Q Continuum, but you were still in obvious possession of your powers. Was that a lie as well? And if not, what further thing did you do to justify being punished more?"

Q sighed, realizing that he wasn't able to dissemble on this topic anymore. "Not a lie... exactly. But it... wasn't exactly the first time they'd done it, either."

"You'd been exiled before?"

"It's a temporary sort of thing. No one takes it very seriously-- it's generally only for a few hundred years or so. It's happened... a few times. The last time, they were mostly annoyed with me because I..." He realized he was saying too much, and that he really didn't want to explain the next part.

"Because you what?"

He also didn't seem to have a choice. "Because I, uh... didn't exactly have the, uh, authority to give Riker the powers," Q mumbled.

"And was that part of the reason for your further punishment?"

"No, that... they've apparently been debating that behind my back for the past thousand years or so. It just happened they reached a decision now."

"I see." Picard steepled his hands in front of his face. "Now. Why, exactly, did they throw you out?"

"You heard him. And I told you already, anyway."

"I want to hear it again."

Q sighed. "They think I use my powers irresponsibly. I take privileges I have no right to. I consistently bend the spirit of the law in following the letter. I disobey my elders. I torment lower races and make the rest of the Continuum look bad. Do I have to go on?"

"No," Picard said, nodding. "I would say that I agree with their assessment."

"Well, I'm sure they're all thrilled to hear it."

"Do you believe the punishment was justified?"

The worst of the depression, held somewhat in abeyance most of this time, crashed in on Q. He folded his hands in his lap and stared down at them, silent for a minute. He hadn't needed to hear that question, hadn't needed to be reminded. In a small, almost inaudible voice he whispered, "...yes."

Picard looked surprised. "You do?"

Q looked up, taking refuge in anger. "The Q Continuum is perfect, incapable of making a mistake. Individual Q, yes, obviously. But if I were to believe for a moment that the Continuum, acting as a whole, could make an incorrect judgment, it would invalidate everything I've known for millions of years. Frankly, I'd far prefer to believe that I'm an evil bastard who deserved what he got. See, I don't think you understand, Picard. Your human analogies only work up to a point. I was part of the same body that judged me! Part of me... was part of the decision to condemn me." He sagged again, the anger fading. "I told you I understand the concept of guilt."

"You... condemned yourself?" Picard sounded somewhat shocked.

"It's... complicated, and I doubt I could explain in human terms. But... I was part of the Q Continuum. That doesn't mean the same thing as being part of the human race. To a certain extent... we are all the same entity."

"Like the Borg?"

"Not like the Borg, nothing like the Borg. We value our individuality very highly. But... I just can't explain it in human terms, all right? We're all individuals and we're all part of a collective mind. You'll just have to accept that."

"Very well."

"But... to the extent to which I am-- was-- part of the collective... it wasn't a decision made by vote, the way you would understand it, any more than the separate parts of your mind vote on your decisions. There were pros and cons weighed, but in the end, it was unanimous. It had to be, or they wouldn't have acted on it. And at the time that the Continuum unanimously decided to throw me out, I was still part of it. So-- in a certain limited sense, yes. I condemned myself."

Picard sighed. "I'm not sure I understand, but I'll leave it at that. I really hadn't intended for this to turn into an interrogation."

"What an astonishing coincidence that it turned out that way, then." Q frowned at Picard. "Tell me, Jean-Luc, has there been a point to all these questions aside from your desire to needlessly humiliate me?"

"Yes. There has." Picard leaned back. "I doubt I will ever be able to forgive you for the deaths of my crewmen, the last time you were here. And I think it would take a great deal of time for me to be able to forget how you treated us, the first and second times we encountered you. But I have revised my opinion of you somewhat. I now believe that there is some hope for you-- that you might, perhaps, develop into a better person. Perhaps someday, unlikely as it seems now, even a person worth knowing."

"Really." This was surprising, and pleasant-- after the direction the conversation had taken, Q was expecting another long speech about how horrible he was. He controlled the impulse to smile. "Does this mean you'll let me stay on your starship?"

"I've been considering that very question."

"And?"

"No."

Q stared at Picard. I'm going to take the word 'and' out of my vocabulary, he vowed. "What do you mean, 'no'?"

"I mean no. I don't believe it would be beneficial for anyone for you to stay aboard the Enterprise."

"Why not?" The fear came back again-- fear that he would be cast out, abandoned to die or simply abandoned, left with people he had even less affinity with than the Enterprise crew. "I could be helpful. I told you last time, you're not prepared for the dangers out there. I may not be omniscient anymore, but I still have a vast amount of knowledge I could share with you-- and with my powers gone, you don't need to mistrust me quite so much. Picard, you're turning down the opportunity of a lifetime."

"I am also turning down the headache of a lifetime. Q, I am not disputing that you could be very useful. But frankly, you're not worth the trouble. If it were simply that you are a danger to this ship, I might decide differently. We are reasonably well able to defend ourselves, and there is precedent-- Starfleet ships have offered people with dangerous enemies sanctuary in exchange for information or services before. In fact, I can say with some certainty that if some other entity, with whom we had had no experience, turned up in the same situation as you, requesting the same protection as you, and offering the same information as you, I might have accepted. The trouble is that I know you."

"You're abandoning me just because you don't like me? I thought better of you, Picard."

"In the first place, I'm hardly abandoning you. I will arrange a sanctuary for you-- elsewhere. In the second place, if it were simply that I personally disliked you, I would never let it interfere with my decision. And in the third place, whether you believe it or not, I have your best interests in mind as well as the welfare of my ship."

"Oh, my best interests in mind? Let's hear your explanation for that, Picard. This one ought to be good."

Picard leaned forward and spoke calmly, evenly. "You are obnoxious. Insubordinate. Unused to discipline. You possess no workable interpersonal skills. These things alone would make a starship a bad place for you. The morale of my people depends on their ability to trust and get along with one another, and you are neither trustworthy nor socially adequate."

As Q opened his mouth to interrupt, Picard held up a hand, overriding him. "Before you complain that you are trustworthy or some such, hear me out. If you cast in your lot with us, I have no doubt that you would want to be trustworthy-- that you would not betray us for casual amusement, as you would have in the past. You are simply not dependable. As I've said before, you are insubordinate, undisciplined and very much accustomed to getting your own way. There are times aboard a starship when everyone's life depends on one person's ability to obey orders quickly and without question. Perhaps you could learn to take orders from me. But what about others? Today you interfered with our work on the Bre'el satellite because you refused to take commands from Mr. LaForge. Your abilities are of no use to us if you cannot use them under someone else's direction. You might be required to work under the direction of Data, or Worf-- for that matter, it is not inconceivable that in some situation you would be working under Wesley Crusher. Could you under any circumstances take orders from a sixteen-year-old boy?"

Q looked down. "You... have a point," he admitted reluctantly.

"Even this would not be an insurmountable difficulty, if you were on another starship, or we had no history with you. Neither of these is the case, however. Before, I told you that you would have to work hard to earn our trust. I've reconsidered in the light of the past several hours, and I no longer think that working hard would do it. Q, you don't have the skills to win our trust. We knew you when, and that will always interfere. It would be an intolerable strain on ship morale if I were to ask my people to protect an individual who has harmed them in the past, who does nothing to make them like him, and whose presence puts the ship into grave danger."

"I thought you humans were supposed to be so compassionate."

"Compassionate, yes. But compassion doesn't operate in a vacuum. Humans learn the rules of social interaction with one another, rules to... encourage others to be compassionate with them. The only social interaction you've mastered is how to be obnoxious. I don't think you even need to try. In fact, even when you try not to be, you're obnoxious. For instance, earlier, when you came into my ready room to talk to me after you were last attacked by the Calamarain, you sat down on my desk. You must be aware of the fact that I find such behavior intensely irritating."

"I didn't-- I wasn't trying to be irritating. I didn't think--"

"You didn't think. Precisely. I know you weren't trying to be irritating, Q. In your own fashion, you were trying to apologize, I'm sure. But you see my point. At your most sincere, you still manage to annoy people." Picard sighed. "When Data first came aboard the Enterprise, he hadn't much more practical knowledge of human social interaction than you do. In many respects, he had much less. In some respects, he still has much less. But Data had no bad habits to unlearn. You are going to have to be with people who'll be very patient with you while you unlearn your bad habits and learn good ones-- and I don't think the Enterprise crew is capable of being that patient with you. You need to go somewhere new, start over with people who didn't know you as an omnipotent bully. People who didn't lose 18 friends and shipmates to an encounter you provoked."

"I'm getting very tired of you throwing that up in my face, Picard," Q snapped. "I didn't kill those 18 people. The Borg did."

"We would never have encountered the Borg if you hadn't sent us into their territory!"

"Au contraire, mon capitaine. You're going to encounter the Borg in less than a year, and I won't have had a thing to do with it. If you'd let me join your crew, I would have warned you-- they're heading for Federation space, they've been headed this way for some time, and I'd estimate their arrival at sometime this year or next."

Picard stared. "That's not what you implied last time."

Q shrugged. "I've been known to be vague about the facts."

"And I'm expected to believe you this time?"

"This time I've got as much at stake as you do. Believe me, I have no desire to be assimilated by the Borg." Q leaned forward. "I could help you against them, Picard. We have some time to prepare. I don't know very much about your technology, it's true, but I understand physics far better than any of your people possibly could. I've also made a minor hobby of studying the Borg-- I know far better than you what they can do. I could work with you on improving your technology, exploiting weaknesses in the Borg-- There's no way you can beat them without my help, you know that."

"I appreciate the offer, and I'm sure Starfleet will wish to take you up on it. The Enterprise is not the place for that, however. You would need to be somewhere stationary, somewhere that Federation scientists can get access to easily."

Or in other words, no matter what Q said, Picard would find an excuse to abandon him. Q sighed, defeated. "What did you have in mind?"

"If you were to offer your knowledge to the Federation as a whole, I'm sure Starfleet would be happy to give you protection. They could set you up on a starbase or a station, something with a fairly advanced defensive capacity. Federation scientists would come to you for theoretical knowledge, or historical data, or anything you have the ability to tell them about. In exchange Starfleet could protect you, provide you room and board and whatever else you need."

"You've wanted to shuffle me off to a starbase since this began."

"Q, a starbase would be a far better place for you than here. For one thing, if you were providing the Federation with your knowledge, you would become very valuable. You would be given sufficient status to compensate for your--"

"Personal problems?"

"Personality problems, I would say. But yes. And as I said before, they wouldn't know you. They'd have no previously established reason to dislike you. You might even make friends." Picard sounded as if he didn't entirely believe the last part of what he was saying himself.

"What do you mean, they wouldn't know me? How am I supposed to explain my knowledge-- and my need for protection-- without telling them who I am?"

"Oh, they'll know who you are. I'm sure they'll be briefed thoroughly. But humans usually prefer to decide their own opinions on the basis of personal knowledge, rather than relying on someone else's experience. They will know of you, but they won't know you, and that might make all the difference."

There was apparently no way to get out of this. "If you insist, Picard." Q still felt as if he were being abandoned, but he wasn't about to admit it-- he had already shown far too much weakness for his tastes. "Make whatever arrangements you wish, I'll comply with them. I don't appear to have much of a choice."

"No. You don't." Picard stood up. "I'll have Counselor Troi take you to spare quarters in one of the civilian areas and set you up there. We probably won't be able to drop you off for a week or so, so you'll need a place to stay. You can wash, rest, get changed, that sort of thing."

"Anything's an improvement on the brig. I'm not picky."

Picard smiled. "I rather doubt that."

His quarters were boring, impersonal, identical to every other spare bedroom on the ship and close to identical to every occupied quarters. Troi brought him there, giving him a civilian combadge. "Ordinarily, civilian combadges are only used in emergencies, and for their locator function. You're a special case, however. You shouldn't use them to hold a conversation, but if you need something, touch the badge, give your name and the person or place you're trying to reach."

"I'm not stupid, Counselor. I've figured that much out from watching the rest of you."

Troi shrugged. "I don't know how much you know-- and since there's so much you don't know, perhaps it would be better to give you too much information rather than too little. You can use the computer to read, listen to music, look up information, and many other things. It's voice-activated, so just tell it what you want. The clothing replicator is over here--" she gestured. "Simply step inside and it'll take your measurements. After that, any clothes you want replicated, call up on the menu."

"What about Starfleet uniforms?"

"You're not Starfleet, so those aren't on your menu. Once you're on the starbase, you'll have access to clothing shops, and you can get anything you want-- except Starfleet uniforms." She smiled. "I'm sorry, but we worked to wear those outfits. As for here, I'm afraid you're limited to what's on the menu, but there's a wide variety. Clothing for women only is marked with an 'f'-- you'll look rather silly if you call one of those up."

"I figured that one out too. And if you worked so hard to wear a Starfleet uniform, why aren't you?"

"This is more comfortable-- and I think it makes me look a little bit more relaxed, more like someone to talk to than a member of a military structure. I think it's important for a counselor to seem personally open, and I think wearing a Starfleet uniform would detract from that a bit." She touched a pad, and another door opened. "In here is the bathroom. Let me show you how to use the fixtures."

As she explained the plumbing and the reasons for it, Q felt a surge of nausea. He'd forgotten entirely about this aspect of human existence. "How unbelievably vile," he muttered, thoroughly disgusted. He was grateful to Troi for realizing that he'd need to know these things-- he wouldn't have thought to ask until it became necessary, and if it had become necessary he would have died of embarrassment-- but it was information he heartily wished he could have done without. He also wondered how soon it would become necessary, whether he would know it when it was time, and if he had time to kill himself first.

"It's just a fact of human existence, Q. There's nothing inherently disgusting about it."

"Can we please discuss something else?"

"All right." She showed him the shower controls and the amenities-- toothbrush, beard repressor, skin cleanser, hair cleanser, that sort of thing. "They're all plainly labeled-- if you read the bottles first, you can't get mixed up."

"What if I did get mixed up?"

"Depending on what you did, anything might happen from accidentally shaving your head to poisoning yourself. So be careful and read the bottles first."

"Right. Sure. Got it." Anything to get off this topic. He had to know these things, but the longer they talked about it, the more he felt sick with humiliation and disgust. At least it was Troi doing the explanations. Data probably wouldn't know what many of these things were and Q really would die of embarrassment if he had to talk to any of the others about this sort of thing. "Anything else I need to know?"

"Not really. Call for an escort if you want to go somewhere-- you're not a prisoner in here, but it's not very safe for you out in the halls without an escort. And if you need anything, feel free to call. I'm going off duty now, but I'll still be up for a few hours."

"Right. Thanks. See you later."

After she had gone, Q had the replicator make him an entire new wardrobe, in halfway decent colors. None of the available clothes on the menu were terribly interesting-- what was this fetish for one-piece jumpsuits? He hated one-piece jumpsuits. They were uncomfortable and awfully unflattering. When he excluded one-piece jumpsuits from the menu, there wasn't much left for his wardrobe-- on the other hand, if he was only going to be here a few days he wouldn't have time to do much dressing up. It was probably time to wash-- he had gotten the impression from Troi that humans showered or bathed every day, and he had no desire to be dirty.

He stripped off the gray jumpsuit and tossed it in a chute that he hoped led to the incinerator, went into the bathroom and attempted to figure out the shower. Troi had shown him how the controls worked, but that didn't stop him from first drenching himself in freezing water and then scalding himself before he figured out how to modulate the temperature properly. He then discovered that getting either hair cleanser or beard repressor in one's eyes was agonizingly painful, something Troi had neglected to warn him about. Terrified that he had just blinded himself, Q staggered out of the shower, slammed his knee on the toilet, slipped on the way out and fell on his face on the carpet in the bedroom, and fumbled around desperately for his combadge, with burning eyes tightly closed. When his fingers finally closed on the device, he called sickbay, panicked, and was told that he could solve the problem himself by running clean water over his eyes. Still blind, he stumbled back into the bathroom, slipped on wet tiles and cracked his head against the sink, and finally managed to crawl back into the shower, where he discovered that the remedy was almost as painful as the problem itself. After he eventually managed to get his eyes open again, he discovered that they were a bright and nasty red. And they still hurt besides.

Overall, it was not the most successful of his experiments.

As he dried himself, trying to be careful of the bruises he'd just collected, he discovered a new symptom-- an uncomfortable pressure in his lower abdomen. It didn't feel anything at all like hunger. He thought of calling sickbay, and then remembered Crusher's tone of long-suffering patience about to wear out. Maybe he didn't want to call sickbay after all. He had the computer here-- perhaps he could figure it out for himself.

He asked the computer to display a schematic of human male anatomy, with the various systems and their functions labeled and described. He then compared the location of the uncomfortable pressure to the schematic, figured out what part of his body was generating the sensation, and felt sick again. Now he was awfully glad he hadn't called sickbay.

Trying very hard not to think about what he was doing and how utterly repulsive it was, he attempted to use the facilities in the bathroom. This was even less successful than the showering experiment-- he somehow managed to splash urine on himself. That was the last straw. His stomach heaved, his throat burned, and he found himself vomiting up the food he'd eaten before. The sight and smell of the partially digested food sickened him further. He retched again, and again, until there was nothing coming up anymore.

Sick and weak, overwhelmed by the horror of his new existence, with his gut twisted and burning, he curled up in a fetal ball on the floor of the bathroom and whimpered for several minutes. Eventually he realized that he couldn't simply lie here-- someone had to clean this mess up, and he was too utterly humiliated to ask anyone else to do it, though he supposed there were probably janitor robots or cleaning people or somesuch. He turned the shower back on, crawled into it to rinse himself off, and then stepped back out, gingerly avoiding the puddles on the floor. The toilet had already cleaned and rinsed itself. He took the towels, put them into the shower, and then threw them sopping wet on the floor, covering up the puddles of vomit. Carefully he scrunched them together, trying to make sure he got all the material and didn't have to touch or look at any of it, rolled up the towels with the filth inside, and threw them down the chute as well. There were puddles of water all over the floor now, but he could live with that.

Now, of course, he had no towels. He limped back out into the bedroom and requested towels from the replicator. Half of them he threw on the bathroom floor again, to soak up the water; he dried himself with another pair and then threw those onto the floor as well. He dumped the dripping towels down the chute and got more clean dry ones from the replicator, which he hung up in the bathroom. He then left the bathroom and pressed the button to shut its door, closing the place and the horrors it had generated away and wishing its door could be slammed. It would feel very satisfying to slam a door around now.

Back in the main room of his quarters, Q got dressed and threw himself on the bed. He felt weak and shaky, and he spent several minutes staring at the ceiling and trying to blank his horrible experience out of his mind. After a few minutes, he managed to regain a bit of his equilibrium, and his mouth twitched into a half-smile. At least it couldn't possibly get any worse than that. He had just experienced the depths of human existence; nothing could frighten him anymore. That was a positive thing in some lights, he supposed.

Though his stomach still hurt from throwing up, he became aware of a different, more familiar pain in it. He was apparently hungry again-- which made sense, since he had just lost any value he'd have gotten from his meal earlier. Resolutely he got up and called up a map of the Enterprise on the computer, tracing a route to Ten-Forward. After what he'd just been through, dealing with Guinan would be child's play. On his way out the door, he remembered that Troi had suggested that he go nowhere without an escort-- that it "wasn't safe". He snorted. Is she afraid I'll make my way to the transporter room and accidentally beam myself into space, or what? He didn't need an escort-- as long as he kept the route memorized he'd be fine.

On the way, he tried to decide what he'd get to eat. The thought of eating anything from the meal he'd had before nauseated him-- even the chocolate sundae, which was a damned shame. He'd really liked the chocolate sundae, at least until his head started to hurt. By throwing up his meal, though, he seemed to have convinced his body that the food he'd eaten before was inherently nauseating. He hoped this was a temporary effect-- he'd hate to think he'd never get to eat a chocolate sundae again.

None of this answered the question of what to eat. He had no idea what was available outside the foods Counselor Troi had ordered for him. When he got there, he looked around, trying to determine what other people were eating. Ten-Forward was fairly full at this hour, but most people were nursing drinks. Finally Q located a crewman in a gold uniform eating something that didn't look nauseating. He approached the man and asked, "Excuse me, what are you eating?"

The man looked up at him. "A ham sandwich."

"Okay. If I wanted to get one of those, what would I say? Just ask for a ham sandwich?"

"A ham sandwich with lettuce and tomato." The crewman's eyes narrowed. "Aren't you Q?"

"Brilliant deduction, Sherlock. However did you figure that one out?"

The crewman-- from his pips he was an ensign-- said, "Because the only other person who'd be that clueless about how to do something would be Commander Data, and he doesn't eat. I heard he and LaForge nearly got killed trying to protect you."

"Data got hurt. Nothing happened to LaForge."

"Uh-huh." The ensign took a bite of his sandwich. "What I'd like to know is why they bothered. After what you put us through, you deserved to get fried."

Q scowled. It angered him that a person he didn't even know would so casually pass judgment on him. "Thank you. It's good to know I have friends I can count on here," he said sarcastically. "What's your name, ensign?"

"Nichols," the man said through a mouthful of food.

"Well, Ensign Nichols, when I get my powers back I'll be sure and remember you, and your kind words."

"You won't get them back," Nichols said. "You're too much of an asshole."

"If it makes you feel secure to believe that, go right ahead," Q told him. "You humans are so good at self-delusion. Far be it for me to stand in your way."

He turned aside, smiling. Hopefully that would give the wretch something to lose sleep over.

There was no sign of Guinan, which was encouraging. Right now he wasn't particularly afraid of Guinan, but there was no sense borrowing trouble. Q walked up to the counter and asked the waitress for a ham sandwich with lettuce and tomato.

What she gave him bore no resemblance to what Ensign Nichols had been eating. Q stared at the bowl-- noodles and bits of meat in an orange-colored sauce. "This isn't what I ordered."

"It's a house specialty," the waitress said. "Compliments of the hostess."

Which meant Guinan. Q stared at it. "Now I have to worry about it being poisoned," he complained. "Or repulsive in some fashion."

"It isn't poisoned and it isn't repulsive," the waitress said tightly. "You want me to take a few bites and show you?"

"Be my guest." He pushed the plate back at her.

The waitress took another fork from under the counter and scooped up some of the noodles, which she ate with apparent gusto. Of course, Guinan could have trained her to do that. Cautiously Q sniffed the food-- it smelled perfectly good. He took a tentative forkful. Tasted good, too-- but this was Guinan. There had to be something wrong with it. "I don't want this."

"Then you're not getting anything," the waitress snapped. "Take it or leave it."

He was very hungry. Q took another tentative bite. Nothing seemed to be wrong with it. "If this turns out to be a plot to humiliate me, I'm going to complain to Captain Picard," he announced, and pulled the plate back.

The waitress snorted and left. Q ignored her, concentrating on the food, trying to figure out what the catch was. Maybe it was infected with some annoying human disease, like the common cold-- nothing dangerous, but humiliating and unpleasant. He was uncomfortably aware that this was Guinan's territory, her arena, and if he wanted to eat he was going to have to face whatever she had planned for him. Suddenly it no longer seemed like such a good idea to have come to Ten-Forward-- there had to be somewhere else on the ship he could get a meal. Did the towel and uniform replicator make food too? Probably it did, he realized. He hadn't needed to come here at all. He could leave and get a meal in his quarters.

A shadow fell on him from behind. He turned, and tensed. Too late to leave now. "I knew you'd show up sooner or later."

"How do you like the meal?" Guinan asked coolly.

"It's quite good, actually. What's the catch?" He narrowed his eyes, studying her. "A disease? A slow-acting drug? Some ingredient humans are allergic to?"

"Nothing like that. I'm not you. Don't you recognize it?"

"Can't say I do. Am I supposed to?"

"It's from my homeworld," she said softly. Then she said something else, in another language, and Q cursed inwardly. He knew perfectly well what the language was. He could remember a time when he spoke it fluently, with Guinan herself, under the name she had had then and in the body and name he had worn at that time. But he couldn't remember it, and he had no idea what she had just said. His lack of comprehension must have shown on his face. "You don't remember that either?"

There was no way to dissemble. "Apparently not," Q said, hating to make the admission. Of all people to show weakness to!

"Guess you're getting senile in your old age," Guinan said.

"Obviously it wasn't a priority with me, or I would have remembered," Q replied, matching her coolness.

"Obviously." Guinan leaned over him. "I said, it's a meal from a dead world, now."

"If you're trying to make me feel guilty, you're being resoundingly unsuccessful. I did far more for you than your miserable world deserved."

Her voice turned ice-cold. "You gave me a completely useless warning."

"Hardly completely useless. You were off-planet when the Borg came, weren't you?"

"Trying to find out the nature of the disaster that was coming."

"Even still. If I hadn't told you what I did, you wouldn't have realized there was a disaster coming at all. You would have been on your homeworld, and you'd have died with the rest of them. I saved your pathetic life."

"Which makes us even." Her eyes narrowed. "Or did you forget that too?"

"That? No. I'm hardly likely to forget that."

"Didn't think you would," she said. "I terrified you. You had no idea you could be threatened."

Q shrugged. "Disturbed me. That, I'll admit."

"You were disturbed before you saw what I can do. You were terrified after."

Q did not like the turn this conversation had taken. He had wanted very much to forget that Guinan existed, after his first encounter with her. He had also wanted very much to get revenge-- he could not forgive what she had done to him, and yet he hadn't dared to take any direct action. Guinan's powers were limited in comparison to his, and not nearly so versatile, but her people had abilities even the Q didn't share-- abilities that made her capable of destroying, or at least neutralizing, him. He had been forced to agree not to interfere with her people, pressured by both the Continuum and Guinan herself; there was no direct way he could move against her.

A few years later he'd seen the perfect opportunity. He had warned her, in as vague terms as he possibly could, of an upcoming disaster that would destroy her people, and offered to save them if she would meet his price. Of course she wouldn't, as he'd known she wouldn't. Her own abilities could confirm the little that he'd told her-- she could see that most of her people would die, but not why, or how. So she'd gone off-world, desperately searching for a way to avert the disaster, and while she was gone the Borg had come and destroyed her home. From a safe distance he'd watched the agony of her guilt, and been gleefully satisfied-- she would always be tormented by the fact that she'd refused his offer. And there was no way that what he'd done-- give a warning, offer to help-- could possibly be construed as against the terms of the treaty the Continuum had made with her people. He had had the perfect revenge, and his own hands were spotless.

He had never expected to be in a position where she could pay him back.

Q stood up and pushed his chair away, facing Guinan. "Is there some point to this?"

"I knew this was going to happen to you, you know," she said. "I've known it for some time."

He stared at her. "What do you mean?"

"I saw this when I first met you. I didn't know what to make of it then. Then last year, when you came to the Enterprise, I realized you were going to become mortal."

Once, he had known exactly how she could have "seen" this, though his own powers over time had been very different from Guinan's. Now they were just words that he had to take for granted. "So you knew. I'm impressed."

"I arranged for you to come here."

That was a different story. Q was incredulous. "How? There's no way-- You couldn't have done that. I was still a Q when I decided to come here-- you couldn't have influenced me..."

"Believe what you like. I told you, I know more than one trick."

He swallowed, and stepped back slightly, the counter pressing into his back. If she had that kind of power... well, it wasn't his concern anymore. Let the Continuum worry about it. "I'm sure Picard will be thrilled to hear that you brought me here."

"Captain Picard would understand my reasons."

"And those are? Simply the desire to gloat over my misfortune?"

"That, too," Guinan said candidly. "Mainly I wanted to do this."

Without warning, she brought her knee up hard into his crotch.

His entire abdominal region imploded, a black hole at the core of him tearing his flesh inward. For a split second, there was no pain, just awful numbness. Then the pain hit, a crippling wave of nauseated agony. His knees buckled, and he sank to the floor doubled over, with a gasp that would have been more like a scream if he'd been able to get a breath. It was impossible to breathe through the horrible pain and nausea-- what air he could get came in as gasps, and what he could breathe out left as whimpers. Guinan had killed him. He had to have massive internal injuries, be hemorrhaging to death-- it was the only explanation for the hideous pain and sickness, worse than anything he'd yet experienced. He had completely misjudged her. Even knowing how much she hated him, it had never occurred to him that she would kill him.

"I haven't killed you," Guinan said coldly-- had he said anything? He didn't think he had. "It's not my way. Besides, the longer you live, the longer you'll suffer."

She bent down, coming toward him. Q flinched away violently, curling into a ball and gasping, "--Don't--"

A look of contempt crossed Guinan's face. She straightened up. "You really do have 'victim' painted on your forehead," she said. "If I didn't know better, I'd almost feel sorry for you."

She turned and walked away. Q lay on the floor, trying desperately to breathe regularly again. Despite what she'd said, he was still positive he had massive internal injuries. He had to get to sickbay. He tried to struggle onto his feet, or at least his knees, but the pain wouldn't let him move properly yet.

"Uh, Guinan?" It was LaForge's voice, close by.

"Yes?" Guinan's voice replied.

"Someone's going to have to take him to sickbay now."

"He's not hurt-- but go right ahead."

A hand landed on Q's arm. He turned his head and saw Geordi LaForge, kneeling next to him. "Q. Can you walk?"

"She's killed me," Q gasped. "I'm dying."

"I doubt it. Now come on. Get up and walk." LaForge tugged his arm. "I'm not carrying you to sickbay."

With LaForge's help, Q managed to stagger to his feet. "I don't think... I should walk. I must have tremendous internal injuries."

"No, you probably just feel like you do. Come on."

"How... do you know? This pain... it's unbelievable. Something's got to be broken inside."

LaForge actually smiled. "Welcome to the wonderful world of testicles, Q."

With an obvious lack of sympathy, LaForge forced Q to walk to sickbay, where they met Dr. Crusher on her way out the door. She sighed in exasperation. "What's wrong with him this time?" she asked LaForge.

"Guinan kicked him in the crotch. I don't think he's badly hurt, but I thought someone should check."

"What do you mean, not badly hurt?" Q demanded. He was still hunched over, leaning on LaForge's shoulder for support. "I'm in agony! The Calamarain didn't hurt this badly and they were killing me!"

"Right," Crusher said. "Lie down over there." She pointed at a bed and turned to LaForge. "Thanks, Geordi. You can go now if you want."

"No problem." LaForge helped Q to the bed, then left.

Crusher took her own sweet time in coming over to the bed. Q, curled up on his side, glared at her. "I'm glad to see you're in no rush."

"I was on my way out the door to go off-shift, actually." She ran the medical tricorder over him. "You're fine, nothing but bruises. You'll be sore for a few hours, but that's the extent of it."

"If there's nothing wrong with me then how can it possibly hurt so much?"

"A lot of nerve endings," Crusher said distractedly. She studied her tricorder readings. "Where did you get all these other bruises?"

"Which ones?"

"You're covered with them."

"Falling three meters to the floor of Engineering probably had something to do with it," Q said, unwilling to admit how clumsy he'd been in the shower. Besides, falling three meters to the floor of Engineering probably was where most of them came from, anyway.

"According to this you need to get some sleep. You feel tired?"

Q scowled. "I'm in too much pain to feel tired," he said, trying to determine whether he did or not. "I don't feel anything like I did when I fell asleep."

"When did you last sleep?"

He thought about it. "I don't remember. I was asleep when the first Calamarain probe happened, if that helps."

"That was over 20 hours ago." Crusher frowned. "Describe what you felt when you first fell asleep."

"I was afraid I was dying." He thought back, remembering. "I felt weak... my limbs were too heavy to move. I felt as if the life were draining out of me. I couldn't see straight... I think I fell on the bed and lost consciousness. This was in the brig. Picard said I fell asleep."

"You didn't," Crusher said. "You were drugged."

"Drugged?" Outraged, Q tried to sit up, and fell back down again as the pain stabbed through him. "Aah!"

"I think the captain's going to want to have words with the security guard on duty when you were in the brig," Crusher said, half-smiling. "There's trace elements of a soporific gas in your system."

"Then-- I didn't fall asleep. I haven't experienced sleep yet."

"Not real sleep, no." She walked around the bed, so he had to roll over to continue looking at her. "You're overdue, though. Go home and get some rest."

"How can you tell?"

"To begin with, your blood fatigue poisons are up. Your neurotransmitter levels are showing an exhaustion pattern. Most importantly, though, you've been up for over 20 hours, with only a drugged nap before that, and you've had a strenuous day." She put her tricorder away.

"I don't feel tired."

"Do you have any idea what being tired feels like?" Crusher said, again in that tone of long-suffering patience.

Q realized belatedly that if he couldn't go by his experience in the brig then he probably did have no idea what being tired felt like. "I don't know."

"Arms and legs starting to feel a bit heavy? Is it more comfortable to lie and rest?"

"Yes, but I thought that was because of what Guinan did."

"Your voice is a little hoarse. Can you hear the difference?"

"I'm not sure--"

"Difficulty concentrating? Difficulty focusing vision? Headache?"

"Some of those."

"You're tired," Crusher said firmly. "I'd suggest you get into a schedule. When you wake up tomorrow, check the time, and go to bed sixteen hours after that whether you think you're tired or not. Being tired's rather subtle-- human children have to be put to bed on a schedule, because they often can't tell when they should sleep and overtire themselves. You'll probably have the same problem for a few weeks."

"Oh, marvelous. What happens if I get overtired?"

"You'll be more irritable than usual-- which in your case, probably means you'll provoke someone into punching you. I'd advise getting regular sleep. I'd also advise that as soon as you have some free time, look up a book on the computer called Man's Body-- An Owner's Manual, and read it. It'll save you a lot of useless trips to sickbay." She turned to a nurse. "Take Q back to his quarters, please."

"Right."

"Aren't you going to give me a painkiller or something? I'm still in terrible pain."

Crusher sighed. "All right." She picked up a hypo and pressed it against his arm. "Now, I'm going home for the night. Try not to have any medical emergencies-- Dr. Raskin's on night duty, and he's likely to be a lot less sympathetic to you than I am."

"Is that possible?"

"He lost his lover when the Borg attacked," Crusher said tightly.

"Oh." Q nodded. It was probably a good idea to avoid sickbay tonight. It was unfair for the Enterprise crew to blame him for the lives lost to the Borg-- but they weren't half as strong on fairness as they liked to pretend.

In his quarters, he lay on the bed and stared at the ceiling, wondering how one went about falling asleep. Last time it had just happened-- sleep, or at least drugged unconsciousness, had overwhelmed him against his will. That didn't seem about to happen. He thought back, and remembered being unable to keep his eyes open-- weren't closed eyes associated with sleep and unconsciousness? Q tried closing his eyes and staring at the blank expanse of reddish dark that action produced. Nothing.

All right, next step. Maybe he needed to be wearing specific nightclothes. He knew that humans often put on different clothes to go to bed. He got up and checked the replicator menu. There were nightgowns, nightdresses, pajamas, sleepers, and lingerie, most of which was marked "f". The pajamas seemed similar to what he wore when awake, but with softer, lighter material. He ordered a set of two-piece pajamas in red and black-- he was awfully fond of red and black-- put them on, lay back down and tried again. No luck.

There was something he was leaving out here, wasn't there? Q tried to remember his study of human life. He hadn't been interested in how they supported their biological existences, paying more attention to their politics, religions and emotional lives-- the interesting stuff. About the only mundane things he'd bothered to look at were speech patterns and clothing. But he had to have noticed something about the way they slept-- darkness! Of course! He turned off the light and lay back down. Most humans preferred to sleep in semitotal darkness. That was what he'd left out.

It was difficult to get comfortable. He tried lying on his side, his back and his stomach. The stomach, he quickly discovered, was a bad idea-- the bouts with nausea and the injury Guinan had given him had made his entire abdominal region ache. The painkiller Crusher had given him mostly muted the ache, but putting pressure on it was definitely a bad idea. Lying on his side, with one arm curled up beside his body and the other underneath the pillow and his head, seemed to be the most comfortable position until the arm under the pillow started tingling. He tried to move it and discovered an awful, nauseating prickling sensation that shot through his entire arm. When he kept it totally still, it felt unpleasantly numb. Instinctively he reached for his combadge with his good arm to call sickbay. Two things stopped him-- the memory of Crusher's warning and the awful prickling sensation again, overwhelming him as he accidentally moved his other arm.

Time to use the computer. "Computer, lights on!" They obligingly came on, blinding him. He blinked in pain and covered his eyes with his good arm. "Look up the following medical symptoms in arms: numbness, prickling sensations, pain, nausea generated by moving one's arm, and tell me the most simple explanation that handles all the symptoms."

"Define most simple."

Q sighed theatrically. "The most normal. The least life-threatening. This is probably something perfectly normal for humans-- so far it seems everything has been."

"Possible explanation: Loss of circulation to injured limb. Possible explanation: Neural damage to injured limb. Possible explanation: Loss of injured limb. Possible--"

"Stop. What causes a loss of circulation? I want the most normal, least life-threatening explanation first."

"Steady pressure on limb can result in loss of circulation."

Steady pressure like resting his head on it for ten minutes, possibly? "If loss of circulation is caused by steady pressure, how do you restore circulation?"

"Moving injured limb will restore circulation and eliminate symptoms."

Lovely. Q tried moving it, tentatively. The unpleasant sensation came back, worse than ever. Experimentally he tried taking the limb with his other hand and moving it back and forth manually. That was a lot less painful. Soon he found that the sensation had dwindled to the point where he could move the arm itself without feeling sick. Each motion seemed to hurt a bit less, until ordinary feeling was restored. "Computer, lights off." He lay on his back and tried to find a comfortable place to put his arms. Throwing one across the bed and the other over his head seemed to be comfortable, but made him feel exposed and vulnerable. He tried pulling the blankets up over him, and discovered that they decreased the feeling of vulnerability by a good bit.

Fine. He had a comfortable position, the lights were out, his eyes were closed. Why wasn't he asleep yet?

The bruise on his knee, from bumping into the toilet, began to ache. Then the bruise on his side, from when the Calamarain had first attacked and he'd fallen to the floor of Ten-Forward. Then the bruises on his back and shoulders from falling to the floor of Engineering, the second time the Calamarain had attacked. Apparently his painkillers were wearing off.

Exasperated, Q sat up. It could not possibly be this difficult for humans to fall asleep. According to the chronometer, he had been working at this for an hour or two, and felt no closer to sleep than before. He picked up his combadge. Sickbay was out of the question and both Troi and Crusher had implied they would be going to sleep. Data wouldn't be asleep, but Data didn't sleep, and probably couldn't offer much advice on how to do it. Q called Picard.

"Picard here." The voice sounded hoarse and slightly bleary.

"Picard, how do you fall asleep?"

There was a moment of silence. Then, "Is this Q?"

"Well, of course it is."

The sound of a deep breath being taken. "How does one fall asleep."

"That's right. I've been trying for hours."

"To begin with," Picard said, in a tone that indicated his patience had run out, "one avoids being called by formerly omnipotent entities in the middle of the night."

"Oh. Did I wake you?"

"Do you have any idea what time it is?!"

Q looked over at the chronometer. "0100 hours, is what the clock says."

"0100 hours. Exactly. Well into shipboard night. You can safely assume that everyone on the day shift except for Data is asleep at this hour. Humans who are asleep do not appreciate being woken up before the appropriate time, which in my case is 0600 hours. Five entire hours from now. Now go to sleep, Q!"

"How? If I knew how to go to sleep, I'd be asleep already!"

"Count sheep," Picard snapped in exasperation.

"What sheep?" Q asked, bewildered.

The link was silent. Picard had cut him off.

Q replaced his combadge on the nighttable and stared up into the darkness of the bedroom, feeling strangely lonely. There wasn't anyone else he could call for help. The sudden quiet after the sound of a human voice was somehow more silent than the room had been before he'd called Picard, and the absence of any other presence, human or otherwise, seemed far more pronounced now. All he could hear was his own breathing and a far-distant hum, possibly the warp engines. With blackness around him, silence enveloping him and all the additional senses he'd enjoyed before gone, he felt as if he were cut off from everything.

He shifted slightly, simply to feel himself move, to know that he still existed. For the first time in his life, he was alone, completely trapped within his own mind, without the glow of the Continuum surrounding him, without even anyone to talk to. As far as the universe was concerned, he might not even exist.

His throat tightened, making it difficult to breathe. At the same time, his eyes burned, a similar but not identical sensation to when he'd gotten chemicals in them. His own utter loneliness and helplessness overwhelmed him, and the choking sensation in his throat worsened as his chest grew tight as well. Something blurred his vision. For a panicked second Q reached reflexively for his combadge, fearing that something new and horrible was happening to him. Then he realized there was no one he could call for help-- the unsympathetic Dr. Raskin currently ruled sickbay, and everyone else was asleep. The thought produced a renewed wave of loneliness and despair. His breath came in ragged and uncontrollable, with small unpleasant sounds in it that he couldn't seem to stop, and when he reached his hand to his eyes the hand came away wet.

That explained it, then. He might know little about human biological functions, but he knew how they showed emotion. Wet eyes meant tears. He was crying.

Q turned over and curled up in a ball, clutching the pillow to himself and muffling his sobs in it. He should have been humiliated, mortified to have sunk so low, but he couldn't muster up the strength. The fact was that he had sunk unbelievably far, from the heights of godhead to the lowliest of the low. There was no more room for humiliation in him. He was hurt and exhausted and desperately alone, and he clung to the pillow like a lifeline and cried like an abandoned human child. Take me back, please. I can't bear this any more. I've learned my lesson, I swear. Oh, please, take me back, take me back...

Some time later his whole body jerked, and he opened his eyes to darkness. His pajamas were drenched and sticking to his body, the blankets tangled around him. The chronometer read 0423 hours. His eyes burned, his mouth was dry, his head pounded, and he was trembling uncontrollably.

This was his quarters aboard the Enterprise, not the courtroom he'd devised. It had been a hallucination-- a horribly vivid hallucination. Not insane too, he moaned silently. Please don't let me be going insane on top of everything else.

Q struggled out of the bedclothes and changed into one of the outfits he'd had the replicator make him earlier, realized there was no point to doing so because the source of the dampness was his own sweat, undressed again and stumbled into the bathroom. All the bruises he'd acquired yesterday, or today, or whenever it had been, had decided they were going to hurt. The light in the bathroom was acutely painful for a few moments, but his eyes adapted quickly enough. He washed, a bit more proficiently this time, dried himself and drank two glasses of water. He then got dressed in a different outfit and sat down in a chair in his room to decide what to do next. The trembling had lessened slightly, but hadn't entirely gone away.

He had to know what this meant. The things he'd hallucinated had proceeded in a sequence, like a story, but there were nonsensical, illogical gaps and leaps throughout, things he hadn't noticed at the time but that seemed glaringly obvious now. Had one of his people briefly sent him into some sort