ONLY HUMAN CHP. II: KETAYA by Alara Rogers; published by Aleph Press The following is section 1 of 12 of ONLY HUMAN, my alternate universe Q novel. If you've missed any parts, the entire story is available through anonymous ftp at ftp.netcom.com, in the directory /pub/al/ aleph/trek, under the name HUMAN2.ZIP. HUMAN1.ZIP, the first chapter of this story, is also available there. The files are pkzipped using PKWARE's version 2.04g. Other sites where you can obtain the rest of this story: ftp://ftp.europa.com/outgoing/mercutio/alt.fan.q ftp://aviary.share.net/pub/startrek/incomplete http://www1.mhv.net/~alara/ohtree.html http://www.europa.com/~mercutio/Q.html http://aviary.share.net/~alara This is an alternate universe novel, and it's long. I mean *looong.* In this chapter and all future ones, we will learn things about the Continuum which are contradicted by the Voyager episode "The Q and the Grey". This is because that was a miserably bad episode which contradicted so much Q canon that I have decided that, for my purposes, it didn't happen. None of the "facts" about the Continuum established in that episode have any bearing on the Continuum background shown in Only Human. For those who have not read Chapter 1 and want to jump right in anyway, the story is based on the episode Deja Q, where Q lost his powers; except that in this alternate reality, he never got them back. It's been three years since then, and there have been some changes. In exchange for protection from various enemies he made while omnipotent, Q has been selling his services as a scientific advisor to the Federation for the past three years. He assisted the Federation in developing a weapon against the Borg; as a result, casualties were lighter at Wolf 359, and Picard didn't become Locutus, someone else did. On the other hand, recently Picard died when a plasma grenade fused his artificial heart. This know- ledge was the final straw to push an already-deeply-depressed-and- borderline-suicidal Q over the edge into a fairly nasty suicide attempt by drinking hydrochloric acid. Fortunately or unfortunately, Q survived, perhaps by the graces of his personal guardian angel/demon, the Q who got him kicked out of the Con- tinuum. This Q has "hired" a mortal psychologist for Q, a Vulcan woman named T'Laren who was raised on Earth (in Texas, to be precise.) Thus far, T'Laren is something of a mystery; we know that the other Q, whom she calls Lhoviri, saved her life and sanity and offered her something she could not refuse in exchange for taking on this assignment. Lhoviri also gave her a ship, called Ketaya, basically a luxury yacht with a souped-up engine. It is T'Laren's belief that Q's depression is in part caused by the fact that everyone on Starbase 56, where he's been living for the past three years, hates him, and that he needs to leave the base in order to recover. Though Q is not entirely sure he believes her-- he believes his depression is simply caused by the fact that he is, in com- parison to before, "blinded, maimed, exiled, and condemned to die--" he is willing at this point to try anything. As Chapter 2 opens, Ketaya has just left Starbase 56 with Q and T'Laren aboard. * * * About an hour and a half after they were under way, Q came up from engineering, where he'd spent the entire time since he'd dropped off his bag in his room, onto the bridge. "This is incredible," he said. "Have you any idea what sort of drive you have?" "One that goes very fast, I'm told," T'Laren said. She found it vaguely amusing that the first thing Q'd done was to examine the engines-- both her father and Soram had been engineers, and it struck her as a particularly male thing to do. "`One that goes very fast.' Toys in the hands of children." He paced around the bridge. "Your ship has a *transwarp engine*, my dear. Have you any *idea* how fast that goes?" "Lhoviri said it would do warp-equivalent 13. Federation starships can't go higher than 10." "No one using warp can go higher than 10, T'Laren-- it's a physical impossibility. Do you know what he's *done*?" It was somewhat hard to tell whether Q was agitated or excited. "Who? Lhoviri?" "He's taken a Thetaran drive and jury-rigged it to work in an obsolete Federation *luxury* yacht, is what he's done. This is just unbelievable!" "Why is it unbelievable?" T'Laren gave up on trying to keep her eyes on the console, and swiveled to follow Q with her eyes as he paced. "And what's a Thetaran drive?" "The Thetarans were the dominant spacefaring race of a conglomerate much like your Federation, about... oh, two thousand years ago, I'd say. At least, that was their peak. They lived out in what you call the Beta Quadrant, deep in unexplored space, and they had a highly advanced technology in comparison to the Federation's, though in real terms they weren't actually any more advanced than, say Vulcans. Lhoviri's taken one of their drives and dropped it into this boat, rather like putting a modern antigrav unit into the body of a 20th-century antique automobile. He's jury-rigged the connections so it'll run off dilithium crystals-- have you tried to use the transwarp drive yet?" "There didn't seem to be a need." "Well, there's no way it'll sustain any power over time. Dilithium crystals simply can't handle transwarp stresses. If we try to *use* our superior speed for any length of time, bang, our crystals are gone." He made an explosion gesture. "The Thetarans used six-dimensional helical matrix crystals. Dilithium's only a fourth-dimensional transverse helix. There's no way our dilithium crystals can maintain the transwarp field without subspace resonances tearing them apart. Did I ever mention that Lhoviri's an idiot?" "Does this mean we can't use the transwarp drive?" "Without transwarp, dear doctor, this cattle boat can only do 9.6. Not bad, mind you, but not good enough. And yes, we can use transwarp, if we want to risk blowing our crystals-- and he's tied the crystals into the secondary power net, which means we could risk losing *all* power, drifting in space-- we have any spare dilithium on board?" "Not to my knowledge." "Get some." He sighed. "I can rig a circuit breaker so the crystals don't blow, at least. They'll shatter under the stress, but that's an improvement over an explosion. I just don't know why he had to do it like this. Why not set up a permanent negative inertial field around the engines and put an ordinary warp core in? It would have been so much simpler." "Could you do that?" Whatever it was. T'Laren wondered if Q realized quite how far the technobabble was going over her head. What was a fourth-dimensional transverse helix, anyway? Q laughed unpleasantly. "Not for the past three years," he said. "What I'm talking about is what we in the business technically refer to as throwing the laws of physics out the window." "If Lhoviri did something that broke the laws of physics, wouldn't he have to expend power-- or at least concentration-- to maintain it?" "No, no. I'm talking about setting up a mild singularity-- a permanent negative inertial field, decreasing our effective mass, which would conversely increase our potential speed. We'd still hit the warp 10 barrier, but if you can do 9.999, no one in this sector of space will be catching you anytime soon. Or he could have set up a transwarp conduit generation matrix, or-- You're not following any of this, are you?" "I'm no engineer." "All right. The take-home lesson, in very simple terms, is that Lhoviri's an idiot and his non-intervention policy could get us both killed, unless either I iron the bugs out of dilithium replication or we stock up somewhere." Q ran out of breath and sank down in a chair, looking suddenly exhausted, and rather surprised. "That was fast." "Are you all right?" He frowned, seeming to think about it. "No... I don't think so," he said. "Let's see... how quickly I get my breath back... and I'll tell you." T'Laren got up and went over to him. "You've been pushing yourself too hard," she said severely. "You know you're not well yet. You should have been resting, not wandering all over our engine room for an hour and a half." "I'm resting now." He lay his head back against the chair, closed his eyes, and took a few deep breaths. "I hate this." "Your weakness, you mean." "Yes." Q opened his eyes and glared at her. "And no snide comments about how it's all my fault. I'm well aware it's my fault, thank you." "I'm not in the habit of making snide comments," T'Laren said. She decided to change the subject. "Now that you're here, perhaps we can discuss our itinerary. Where would you like to go?" "I don't know. Where is there?" "I had a few different places in mind." She called the choices up on the computer, more for his sake as she remembered them perfectly well. "The Federation Archeological Society is having its annual conference in three weeks. This year the conference is on Chatimore Prime in the Eyrie system. One of the main topics of discussion: did the Chatimari evolve from the Eyrians of Eyrie 2, 3 and 5, or did they evolve independently?" "They evolved independently. Actually they were dumped there by the Preservers. But they're no relation to the Eyrians; they just look that way because of interbreeding." T'Laren looked at him, trying to determine if he were serious or not. "I don't need to know the answer. I merely wanted to know if you wish to attend the conference." "It'll probably be mind-numbingly dull. Who'll be there? Is Picard going to-- damn." Q fell silent for a moment. He stared into nothing with a look that might have been anger, or grief. "I keep forgetting." He showed every sign of becoming lost in introspective pain. T'Laren handed him a datapad with the list of names on it. "Q. Here's a list of the attendees." Q blinked and took the pad from her, shaking himself out of the incipient depression. "Right." He studied the pad. "Dull, dull, dull. I don't know any of these people. I suppose it might be entertaining to crash the conference and shoot down all their ridiculous theories, but there has to be more to life than that. What else is there?" "There's the wormhole near Bajor, the one that opens up on the Gamma Quadrant." "Hmm." Q considered that. "The Gamma Quadrant is an entertaining place, but only if you've got a year or more to spend there, even if your starship *can* go warp 13. And I'm not sure I want to spend that much time away from civilization." "The Gamma Quadrant is uncivilized?" "You know what I mean. It's dangerous for me to be that far away from anyone who would be sympathetic to me. The entire universe of people I once wronged seem to know who I am, but none of the entities I ever helped out apparently remember me." "Did you ever help anyone out?" "How sharper than a serpent's tooth is a suspicious Vulcan," Q said, pressing his hands to his chest in a melodramatic gesture. "You hurt me, T'Laren, you really do. Of course I helped people... not that most of them realized what I was doing at the time. In fact, a large number of the people who want me dead are people I helped. Not everyone has the perspective to understand what's good for them." T'Laren had her own theories on that, but she let it pass. "The third possibility I'd thought of was the singularity in the Abister system. They're apparently holding an open physics conference regarding it aboard the Yamato-- luminaries from all over have been invited, not just members of the Federation." "Refresh my memory. What is this singularity?" "No one knows. The Yamato was stationed there, studying it, for six weeks, and couldn't figure out what's causing it, so Starfleet's decided to host a physics conference. Singularities aren't supposed to simply come into existence for no apparent reason, as I understand it, and it seems that this may pose a threat of some kind." "Let me see the guest list." She handed it to him. He scanned it with evident glee. "Daedalus!" "Who?" There was no `Daedalus' on the guest list. "Dr. Peter Markow. I know him. And a Klingon-- ooh, the redoubtable Dr. Morakh. Now this I've got to see." He frowned at the final entry. "Who's this Professor Yalit?" "It says she's an associate professor at the Makropyrios." "I am well aware of what it says, T'Laren. I can indeed read most Federation scripts. I thought I knew everyone associated with the Makropyrios-- it's the most prestigious physics institute in the Federation, and a good number of its graduates and professorial staff have ended up on my doorstep." He scrutinized the datapad. "This says associate professor." "Yes. I can read as well, Q." "Associate means she doesn't work there, though she might have once and she almost certainly graduated the place. Let's see her bio." He called up the biographical notes. These were painfully brief-- Yalit had graduated the Makropyrios 56 years ago, with honors, worked there as a lecturer for ten years, and then left for parts unknown. A publication list was appended, but with no sourcepoint for her manuscripts. "I don't believe it. They don't even list her *species* here! What is she, a Romulan?" "That would be listed. And Yalit isn't a Romulan name." "I've never heard of this woman. Well." Q put down the datapad. "It seems we're going to the conference on the Yamato then. What's our ETA?" T'Laren did some quick calculations. "At warp 6, three weeks." "Warp *6*? This ship can do warp-equivalent *13* and you want to tootle along at *6*?" "You just told me that traveling at transwarp speeds can damage our power supply. Unless it's necessary, I'd prefer not to risk it. The conference doesn't actually begin for 18 days-- and you need the time to recuperate. If spending an hour and a half on your feet exhausts you, you would never make it through a two- week conference." "I suppose you have a point." He leaned back in the chair and closed his eyes again, smiling. "It's difficult to be annoying when one has to sit down and shut up every fifteen minutes or so." "If I were you, I would find something to take pride in other than my prowess at being annoying." "Like what?" Q opened his eyes. "My good looks? My charm? My usefulness to the universe? Let's face it, T'Laren, I'm a luxury. I'm sure the Federation would like to keep me around, but they don't *need* me. No one needs me. No one's needed me since the Borg were defeated. Which leaves me exactly two things that I'm good at: I'm very smart, and I'm very annoying." He shrugged. "One needs to make the most of one's assets." "Making the most of one's deficits, however, is not generally a useful policy." "There you go again, expecting me to be logical. Of course it's not a useful policy. Very little of what I've done for the past three years has been useful." He was trying to provoke a pointless argument. "Why don't I walk you back to your room?" T'Laren asked. "I can show you around Ketaya on the way." "Did you ever notice how often you change the subject when you're talking to me?" Q asked. "Did you ever notice how often you continue to discuss a subject after you have nothing more to say?" T'Laren replied. Q's eyebrows went up. "Oh, good. Very good," he said, nodding slowly. "Very well, T'Laren. Let's go exploring." He stood up and headed for the back of the bridge. "What's behind this door?" "My quarters," T'Laren said, as the door swooshed open and he entered. She followed close behind. Q was standing in the middle of her study/living room, looking around. "The privileges of command," he said. "This is certainly bigger than *my* quarters." "The captain's quarters is the largest living suite on the ship," she said. "Then come the passenger suites, where you are, and then the crew suites, which are rather tiny, comparatively." He wandered into her bedroom. T'Laren considered telling him that that was extremely rude, and decided against it. In his current mood, that was no doubt the effect he was aiming for. "How long have you been living here?" he asked. "Four months." "No decorations, no pictures of the folks back home... Not even an obscure Vulcan musical instrument to liven up the decor. Are all the rooms you've lived in this devoid of personality, or is it something new you're experimenting with?" That hit a nerve. T'Laren remembered telling Anderson that Q could not offend her unless she chose to be offended, and concentrated on the disciplines. "They've all been this way," she said dryly. "It's a Vulcan meditative discipline." "Really." He stepped out of the bedroom. "I think you're attempting humor." "If I told you that I found your behavior immensely offensive and demanded that you stop, would that satisfy you?" T'Laren asked calmly. "Would you stop probing for weaknesses and behave like a rational human being? Or will you insist on playing these games for a few more hours?" Q blinked at her. "Do you always do that?" "What?" "Ask questions based on a conversation's meta-structure. Normal people don't do that. I think you've been a psychologist too long." "Occasionally it helps," she said. "*Do* you find my behavior immensely offensive and want to demand that I stop?" "Undoubtedly if I said `yes', you would say `good', and continue as you've been doing." "I take it that means `yes, but I'm not going to tell you so.'" "You would take it incorrectly. I am aware that your intention is that I be offended. For the sake of teaching you to stop behaving offensively, I had considered explaining to you why your behavior is unacceptable. I think you know why your behavior is unacceptable, however, and right now perhaps it would be more valuable to teach you that you cannot offend me." "Will you *stop doing that!*" Q exploded. "Every time I say something you answer as if you're writing a paper on the behavior of Q! Stop analyzing me!" T'Laren raised an eyebrow in an almost-smiling gesture. "It seems I've found something that offends *you* first," she said. "What, is this a contest?" "That's your decision. Do you want this to be a contest?" He took a deep breath. "No-I-do-not-want-this-to-be-a- contest," he snapped back at her on one exhalation, and ran out of air, gasping at the end. "All right. You win. You can do the metalevels thing as well as I can, you can treat me like an object for study well enough to *really* get on my nerves, I concede. You can beat me in a conversational battle anytime I'm depressed, exhausted and half-dead. I bow to my better. What do you want me to do?" She doubted the games were over-- games were far too integral a part of the way Q dealt with people-- but the fact that she'd gotten him to admit they were there and agree to stop them was a good first step. "I would like for you to let me walk you back to your room, as you're tired and irritable and could use a rest. On the way I could show you around the ship, or we can wait for another time." "Fine. Show me around the ship. Whatever." T'Laren had heard more enthusiastic reactions in her time, but at least he was cooperating. Ketaya's body was that of a Tamlin-class luxury yacht, a small ship designed for 2-6 crewmembers and with the ability to carry up to four passengers, more if they roomed together. Tamlin-class ships could be privately owned by wealthy people as their personal transportation, or could be used by a small crew for ferrying passengers on pleasure cruises. As a result, it was slightly schizoid, trying in different locations to be either cozy or luxurious. The observation deck definitely fell on the luxurious side. T'Laren guided Q back onto the bridge and out the door in the front, leading onto the balcony for the forward dining room/observation room. This room spanned three of Ketaya's four decks, occupying almost all of the forward bow, with a curved transparent plasteel surface forming the ceiling and three of the walls, exposing the stars. Right now they were in warp, so the computer-imaging function was in effect, turning the bizarre spacescape of subspace into a normal-looking sea of rapidly moving stars. "This is the main dining room and lounge," T'Laren said. "We're on the Deck 1 balcony." She gestured downward. Below, on Deck 2, were six tables, and the pit on Deck 3 contained a fountain, currently deactivated. "This room is primarily intended for guests aboard a space yacht; I doubt we'll be using it much." "Oh, I agree." Q scowled at the starscape. "This is horrendously overdone." She stepped back onto the bridge and walked around its perimeter. "This is our transport platform, and down this way, as you've already discovered, is engineering." T'Laren stepped on the turbo-platform down to engineering. After a moment, Q joined her. They descended past engineering on Deck 2 down to Deck 3. "Sickbay's up on Deck 2, along with the crew's quarters, and on Deck 4, on either side of the airlocks, we keep maintenance equipment and supply closets." T'Laren stepped off the platform as it stopped on Deck 3, and Q followed. "This is the passenger level, so most of the facilities are here. Down that way " she pointed toward the back of the ship-- "is the swimming pool, the sauna, and the gym. Right here is the kitchen." "What's the point to having a kitchen aboard a starship?" Q asked. "Don't tell me you can cook." T'Laren shrugged. "If you insist," she said. "You've already dumped your bags in your room, so I presume you know where it is. If you'd rather have any of the other rooms for some reason, they're all along this corridor." "Who created this monstrosity?" Q stopped in the middle of the corridor. "I mean, yes, obviously Lhoviri created it, but was the internal design plan *his* idea? Or did you make this up?" "It's a Tamlin-class yacht, with some slight modifications that I assume are to accommodate the drive. I suggested that he use this type of plan-- when I was young, my parents took me on a trip to Vulcan, and we traveled in a Tamlin-class ship. Why?" "Because it looks like what would happen if you crossed a starfaring home with a pleasure liner, an unaesthetic combination at best. And who designed the decor, and what is their fetish for the color green?" "I did. I like green. If you would prefer a different decor, by all means design one." She walked to the door of his room and touched the "open" panel, gesturing for him to go into his room. Q went in and collapsed on his bed. "It is unbelievable how quickly I get tired," he murmured. "I can't even seem to sustain a conversation." What he meant, T'Laren thought, was that he couldn't seem to sustain a pointless argument, though he was certainly trying his best. "If you want to take a nap, it'll be a few hours before we're having dinner." "I can't take a nap. I can't sleep without a sedative." He rolled over and stared at her. "What do you mean by a few hours before dinner? Is there some set time during which the replicators produce food, and at no other time can we get a meal?" "I would like you to eat with me, in the kitchen." "Why?" "Eating together is an important social connector for humans." "It's meaningless to me and you're a Vulcan, so why bother?" "You're missing the point," T'Laren said sharply. "I'm here to teach you how to make social connections with your own species, not Vulcans. What is meaningless to you is meaningful to others and costs you very little. So you are going to develop the habit of eating with other people." "And if I refuse?" "You will get very hungry." Q sat up. "You'd lock me out of the replicator system?" "I already have," T'Laren said. "You can't use a replicator without my supervision." At Q's look of outrage, she tilted her head slightly. "Consider, Q. Would I be sensible to let a known suicide risk use a replicator freely?" Q's eyes narrowed. "Am I confined to my quarters without your supervision too?" "No." "But that would be sensible, too. Why would you let a known suicide risk walk around freely? I could find my way back to the airlocks and space myself. Or drown myself in the swimming pool." "You could," T'Laren said, nodding. Actually he couldn't. There were safety interlocks on the airlocks so they couldn't be opened with a person inside, and the swimming pool would rapidly drain itself if its biosensors sensed a person in danger of drowning in it. But she saw no need to tell him that-- he would interpret it as a challenge and work to get around it, even if he didn't actually plan to kill himself. "I don't think you will, though." "Then why aren't you letting me use the replicators?" He stood up and walked over to her. "This is some kind of power trip, isn't it. You're as bad as Anderson. You simply want to control my life." Q loomed over T'Laren. "Isn't that it?" T'Laren craned her head up to look at him and made no move from her position. Her unshakable calm would make him look paranoid, automatically defusing his argument. It was a useful technique. "You have twice attempted to kill yourself on what appeared to be a momentary impulse. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems as if your first two suicide attempts were not planned in advance. At some moment, it suddenly struck you that your life was unbearable, and you took the first opportunity at hand to correct the situation. Am I right?" "The third time was planned. I planned that for a month." T'Laren nodded. "The third time was also far more serious. I think you gave a lot of thought to your decision, and tried to find some other solution. It was less that you wanted to die than that you thought death was the only alternative to your pain. I have presented you with another possible alternative, and I believe you want to try to make this work. You would rather be happy than dead, am I correct?" Q stepped back from her with a snort of contempt. "Of *course* I'd rather be happy than dead. Anyone would. What kind of a stupid question is that?" "And you are an intelligent man, and aware that if this solution is to work, it'll take some time to take effect. You will give me at least a month or two to prove that you can be happy before deciding that this is hopeless and the best solution is still death. Yes?" "Thank you for putting words in my mouth." "Am I right?" Q glared. "Yes, yes. You're right, you're perfectly correct, you're practically omniscient, now get to the point!" "I don't need to protect you from planned suicides, Q. For a while, at least, you won't plan your own death-- you'll give me some leeway to try to help you. What I need to protect you from is a sudden overwhelming surge of despair that drowns out your reason. I am afraid that if you had a close, convenient, painless method of suicide at hand-- as you would, if you had access to the replicators-- you might be possessed by a sudden desperate desire for oblivion and act on it. If it took a few minutes to arrange your own death, you would have time to reconsider and let your reason reassert itself." She walked over to him, took his hand, and guided him gently over to his bed. "And whether you want to admit it or not, you're glad I took the precaution. You know you cannot entirely trust yourself, and you're glad that someone is thinking of how to catch you if you falter." He looked as if he would argue with her for a moment. Then he sat down on the bed, resigned and exhausted-looking. "I suppose you're right," he whispered, almost silently-- it might have been inaudible to a human. He looked up at her. "You win. Call me when you want to have dinner-- I'll be unpacking, or resting, or something." "You should sleep. You look exhausted." "I am exhausted, but that doesn't mean I'd be able to sleep. My mind isn't tired, just this feeble shell it's trapped in. I'll be all right if I simply rest for an hour or two." "All right then." She suspected he'd fall asleep anyway, but it wasn't worth pressing the point. "I'll get you for dinner in a few hours."