ONLY HUMAN CHP. II: KETAYA by Alara Rogers; published by Aleph Press The following is section 5 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. * * * To T'Laren's amazement, Q was actually capable of being somewhat reasonable. He complained all the way through the exercise session, but at least he did what he was told. And afterward, when she requested their lunches from the replicator, he ate his without complaint and even with some enthusiasm. He seemed to have completely forgotten about the incidents this morning, leading her to wonder just how long he held grudges. There was evidence that as an omnipotent being, he'd been capable of holding a grudge for centuries, but from what she had seen and heard from him and the people she'd interviewed, he seemed far quicker to forgive than anybody gave him credit for. She doubted she'd get a straight answer out of him if she asked-- but then, sometimes his obfuscations were revealing in themselves. "How well do you hold grudges, Q?" she asked. He looked up from the raisin bagel he'd been intent on. "What brought that on?" "Curiosity," she said, with a slight tilt of the head. "I will undoubtedly ask questions out of nowhere fairly often, so perhaps you should get used to it. Feel free to do the same." "All right," he said, straight-faced. "What's the exchange rate for latinum to Andorian sessis?" "Relevant questions," T'Laren clarified, as Q grinned. "And I don't want my question to be dismissed. Do you generally hold grudges?" "That's... complicated." He took another bite of the bagel and said with his mouth full, "What kind of grudges? Against who?" "Anyone." "Well, that narrows the field considerably, thanks." Q put the bagel down. "Do I have replicator access now?" "Yes." "Good." He turned to the replicator. "Another steak sandwich, this time *without* all the lettuce." "Is this a terribly sensitive question for you, that you're ignoring me?" "Not at all. I'm hungry. What is this fetish you Vulcans have for lettuce, anyway? If I have to eat a vegetable, can't it be something that doesn't taste like crispy water?" "I find it interesting that you suddenly became hungry after I asked you a question." Q sighed in exasperation. "I'm not avoiding the question, T'Laren. I'm eating my lunch. I'll answer your question in a second, all right?" T'Laren sipped at her cassava juice, watching him. He took a bite of the sandwich, put it down hurriedly, opened it and applied various condiments, taking small bites after each application to check the flavor. "You realize," she said, "you could have gotten it out of the replicator in exactly the condition you wanted it in." "I didn't know what condition I wanted it in. This is trial and error." Finally satisfied, he gestured at her with the sandwich-holding hand. "All right, your question. I have been known to forgive people transgressions that other Q would have obliterated them for. I have also been known to enact hideous and lengthy revenges for offenses other Q would have found trivial. Can you give me a context for your question? Grudges for what?" "Since you became mortal, have you held grudges against people who have humiliated you?" "Oh!" He nodded with dramatic comprehension. "You want to know if I'm holding a grudge against *you*." She would have thought that would have been immediately obvious to him. Perhaps he was being deliberately dense. "In part, yes. But it is also a general question." "Well, then no." He took another bite of the sandwich. "It is amazing how much hungrier I feel. I don't think I've had this much appetite in months." "It's the physical activity," T'Laren said. "By no, you mean you don't hold grudges against people for humiliating you?" "No, I mean I don't hold a grudge against *you*." "That wasn't what I was asking." Q sighed. "You're annoying, you know that?" "I believe that's an excellent example of the pot calling the stainless steel serving fork black." Q blinked at her. "That isn't how it goes." "You aren't the only one permitted to paraphrase old Earth sayings. Why am I annoying?" "I don't hold grudges against people I need," Q said. "For instance, while I've far from forgotten all of Commodore Anderson's attempts to blackmail and coerce me into doing her will, I've more or less forgiven her for them. Actually, in some respects I'm very quick to forgive. One can't spend all one's time standing on one's dignity when one's role in life is that of a provocateur. Occasionally the provoked will come up with some creative method of striking back, and one can hardly destroy them for doing exactly what one pushed them into doing." "Weren't we discussing your mortal life?" "I'm explaining why I tolerate minor insults to my dignity, in the context of my entire existence. You see..." He took a drink of grape juice. "For example. This one's in my records, so it's hardly anything you don't know. Five years ago or so-- well, more or less five years, I haven't been keeping close track-- I attempted to persuade Riker to join the Continuum, for... what seemed like good reasons at the time. It was in part a genuine attempt. It was also a game, a test, a challenge and a number of other things. Picard offered a bet with me that Riker would defeat the challenge I'd set him. I, of course, knew that no human could *possibly* resist the temptation of godlike power, so I cheerfully accepted." "I take it things did not work out as planned." "They did not. Riker refused-- how, I still don't know. Picard then indulged in a little bit of personal gloating over the fact that he'd won the bet, and therefore I had to leave. At that moment I was quite enraged with him. I mean, think about it. This little insect, making demands of *me*, a god! I might have destroyed him if... circumstances had been different." He lifted his grape juice glass. "In the long run, however, I'm not that petty. I go around challenging mortals to beat the tests I set for them-- I really don't let it get to me when they succeed. In fact, the ones that succeed, that actually defeat my tests, fascinate me. It was the reason I came back to humanity after they beat my Farpoint test, and the reason I chose to warn Picard about the Borg, and the reason I kept studying the race. On the other hand, yes, I am capable of holding grudges. The worst thing I ever did in my entire existence was for revenge on someone." He drank. "What was that?" Q put down his glass hard and leaned forward. "T'Laren, you *know* my history. If *I* say that something is the worst thing I've ever done, something I was ashamed of even when I was still all-powerful, one can imagine roughly how bad it had to have been. Now what makes you think that I would for any reason whatsoever want to *tell* someone about it?" "Why would you have brought it up if you didn't?" "As a relevant example. You don't need to know the details." "I wouldn't judge you, Q. That's not my place." "No, it's not your place, but yes, you would. No sentient could avoid it. I don't care how objective and logical you think you are, if you knew the whole sordid story you would judge me. Harshly." "What was the general nature of it? Did you destroy a sentient species?" "Nothing like that," Q snapped impatiently. "Actually, I *have* destroyed sentient species, but never without reason. This was..." He sighed. "You're not going to stop hounding me until I toss you a bone, are you?" "I *am* curious," T'Laren admitted. "Suffice it to say that someone I cared for very much hurt me very badly, both physically and emotionally-- which is a neat trick when you consider that I was invulnerable-- and in retaliation I did... something heinous even by *my* standards." He stared into nothing. "I became ashamed of it even when I had the power to correct my mistake... but not ashamed enough, it seems. Pride wouldn't let me. And now I have a much better idea of exactly what I did to her." T'Laren had to admit to being desperately curious. What *would* a being who shrugged off genocide consider a heinous act? She risked a wild guess. "Was it Guinan?" "*No!*" Q looked simultaneously astonished and disgusted. "What *ever* gave you that idea?" "I spoke to Guinan, when I was on the Enterprise--" "When were you on the Enterprise?" "About-- three or four months ago. I'm not entirely sure-- time passed strangely when I was with Lhoviri on a frequent basis. I was interviewing people who remembered you, in preparation for taking you as my patient." "Well, I'm glad to hear that some preparation went into it. What *did* Guinan say? I can't imagine she told you much; she's too addicted to her woman-of-mystery act." "Very little. Only that you had had dealings with one another two centuries ago, and that she approved of my mission to humanize you." "What? No vitriol about how the irresponsible Continuum lets its irresponsible children run amok in the universe? No choice comments about what a pathetic human being I am? Didn't she even wish you luck?" "She did wish me luck, in fact." T'Laren leaned forward. "What happened between you?" Q leaned back in his chair. "Oh, I had a little misunderstanding with Guinan. I understood that she was not a danger to me, not gratuitously cruel, and not a treacherous bitch. Obviously, I fell a bit short of omniscient there." T'Laren raised an eyebrow. "That sounds rather one-sided." "It is. It's my side. If you want Guinan's side, why don't you ask her? You being such pals with her and all." "I received the distinct impression that what little she told me was all she planned to. What did you do to her?" "Hardly anything at all. Not in comparison to what she did to me." "Then what *did* she do to you?" Q raised a hand and ticked off on his fingers. "She lied to me. Tricked me. Betrayed me. Lied to me. Defied me. Threatened my existence. Did I mention she lied?" T'Laren had to work to maintain control. She should not be amused by this, she knew. "You sound like a man speaking of an ex-lover." "Guinan was *not* my lover!" Q snapped. "I have better taste than that." "But she could hardly have betrayed you had you not trusted her to some degree in the first place." "Well, she wasn't my lover. That would have been bestiality. For a Q to actually fall in love with a mortal, even a long-lived one... it happens, I'll admit, but not to me, not in all the millions of years I lived. I would never have lowered myself that way." "But the one we mentioned before-- the one you said you cared about--" "Azi was a Q. She had been my best friend for... I don't want to talk about this." He stood up, tossing the remains of the steak sandwich next to the remains of the bagel. "Why do I let you do this to me?" "What?" "Don't play innocent, T'Laren! You know perfectly well what you're doing!" "Yes, I know what I'm doing... but not how you perceive what I'm doing. I ask again, what?" "I told you I didn't want to discuss it. Not Azi, not Guinan, not anything like that. Yet somehow I find myself telling you secrets that I would have sworn a tractor beam couldn't have gotten out of me. As a professional provocateur, I would dearly love to know how you're doing it. It amazes me that in ten thousand years of doing this sort of thing, there could be *any* tricks I'd missed." T'Laren shook her head. "It's not a trick. I'm not manipulating you, Q. If you're telling me things, it's because you want to." "But I don't want to!" he shouted. "You're... I don't know what you're doing, but you're making me tell you things." She merely looked at him for several seconds. Q reddened, but held his ground. "It's true," he insisted. "I'm trying to help you, and you know it," she said gently. "That's why you're telling me things. You know you have no hope if I can't help you, and you know that I can't help you if you don't answer my questions." "I really don't see how me telling you about Azi is supposed to help you help me." "It gives me some insight into you," T'Laren said. "Normally I prefer to learn about my patients' backgrounds in as much detail as possible. You are in many ways the most alien being I've ever treated. If you had anything analogous to a childhood, it's doubtful you could express it in terms I could understand without oversimplifying to the point of uselessness. You obviously have what you've analogized as family conflicts, but with you the family appears to include your entire species. So anything you *can* tell me, anything I can understand, gives me a point of reference to understanding you. I know now that the Q are capable of love--" "Azi wasn't my lover, either. The Q don't have sex." "I didn't say she was your lover. I said you loved her. You may have loved her as a sister, or a best friend, or a mother for all I know. And she did something to you that hurt you badly, and in response you did something so horrible to her that you feel Lhoviri would be justified in tormenting you in turn." "I never said--" "You did. Vulcans are good at logic, Q. I can put two and two together at least as well as you." She stood up. "Knowing this really does help. I know now that the sensations of guilt and betrayal had not been alien to you, the way that... for example, that physical pain had been. You had experienced such emotional hurts before losing your powers. And no, you're right-- I probably don't need to know the details. Which is undoubtedly why you didn't tell me them." "Don't credit me with great insights," Q said tiredly. He walked away from her and perched himself on the counter. "I am quite positive I have no subconscious insight into what you require for your profession. I said whatever I did... presumably because for a brief psychotic moment I actually wanted you to know. You really don't know what I'm capable of, T'Laren." He looked down at the floor, kicking his legs listlessly against the cabinets under the counter like an overgrown child. "You really don't. You may have heard a few choice bits from Lhoviri, you've read my files, but... you *really* don't know me. And... it's odd, part of me actually *wants* you to know. I suppose on the somewhat perverse principle of a trickster's form of honesty. But I'm not that masochistic. I really hope you do never find out." She walked over to him and stood next to where he sat, leaning very slightly against the counter. "Q... I won't pry into anything you really don't want to discuss. But it's part of my job to try to get you to admit to unpleasant truths about yourself." "Oh, I've been doing plenty of that. I think sometimes that's all I've done, these past three years." He slid off the counter. "That was a bad idea." "What was?" "Sitting up there. My back is killing me. Massage or no massage, I am not made for exercise, stretching or otherwise." T'Laren raised an eyebrow. "You just want a backrub." Q turned to look at her, a grin of mock embarrassment spreading across his face. "You see right through me." "Sit down where I can reach you." Q obeyed with alacrity. "I really am going to have to teach you self-relaxation exercises." "And how to swim. And how to behave in company. And how not to have nightmares." "Yes. All of that." He sighed, leaning back into her touch. "You want to know what you can about my background? About what it was like, to be part of the Continuum? That is more or less what you were fishing for before, with all that about you needing to know whatnot, isn't it?" He was actually volunteering information. T'Laren raised both eyebrows, startled. "I... would like to know anything you're willing to tell me, yes." "This will probably help you understand, then." Q turned his head slightly to look up at her. "Refresh my memory. Vulcans are telepaths, but it's activated only by touch, right? Normally you're linked with only one other person at most?" "Yes." "But when you're linked-- it's a melding? Not just mind- reading, but mind-combining?" "When a link is formed, it's through a meld. We don't have to meld. We can project through any solid matter, with sufficient concentration, and read emotions through touch, if we aren't shielded. But... yes, initiating a link requires a meld." "Humans aren't telepaths," Q said, relaxing his head again so she could no longer see his face. "They lead very lonely existences, each locked inside his own skull. Most of them never know anything else. They confuse physical closeness, emotional closeness, with mental closeness. And because they are forced to be individuals by their biology, what they seek is unity. Submergence into a mob mind, emotional closeness with a partner, identification with something greater than themselves. Most humans spend their lives eagerly trying to subsume their individuality into some sort of collective." "I wouldn't say most humans..." "I speak historically as well as based on the present day. Humans are far from perfect now, but even I have to admit they've come light-millenia from what they were even six measly centuries ago. My point, however, is not to gratuitously insult humans. You see, the Q have the exact opposite problem." T'Laren released him. "Is that better?" "Not really, but I don't think it's going to get better. You may as well not bother." She walked around him and sat down again where she could watch his expression. "The opposite problem in what sense?" "From the time we actually enter the Continuum-- which most of us don't do until we're fairly well developed already-- we are constantly in contact with the others. Our minds aren't really our own. We are-- I don't know how to describe it. You could call us interconnected nodes in a network, each node capable of independent thought, but the network forming the primary unit of experience. Or you could think of us... as diffuse semi-solids in a liquid solution. At our cores we are mostly one thing, but out at the boundaries... we are mostly others. I really don't know how to describe it." "Can you describe the effect? Without resorting to analogies?" "I can try... We're individuals. But our individuality is not our default, the way it is with humanity. We are first and foremost members of the Continuum, the overmind, the unity of all the Q... and secondarily we're ourselves. We *are* part of something larger than ourselves, by definition. We can't escape it. And so what we seek is individuality. Separation from the others. Our... social connections, for lack of a better word, are conducted for different reasons than humans do. We don't *need* reassurance that we're loved, that we're part of a larger whole, that we're important to others. All that we can take as a given. Most of our communication with one another-- all right, I'm talking about the adolescents. I can't speak for the older ones. They're as far above me-- as far above what I was as I was above you. But I'm speaking about the younger ones, like me, the ones that still bother to interact with the matter-based universe at all. And we communicate with each other to separate ourselves, not to draw ourselves closer." He leaned forward. "Do you see what I'm saying?" "I do. Yes." "Of course, we can send communications on multiple levels at once. We can simultaneously affirm our individuality, our dominance over another, our respect and love for that other, and our need for separation from that other with one thought. All our communication with one another is multi-layered, and only the most superficial level translates into human speech. And in that mode we're usually antagonistic toward one another. We have to be. A Q who doesn't have an overweening ego and an unshakably stubborn personality will be absorbed by the Continuum, diffused among all of us until he no longer exists as a separate entity. That's the only thing we have to fear. We can't die-- well, not unless the Continuum throws us out-- but we can cease to exist as individuals, which is more or less the same thing." "But you call them your family." "They *are* my family. They were extensions of myself." "Families are associated with closeness--" "Forced closeness, T'Laren. Closeness that's taken for granted, until it becomes stultifying. You never had any siblings, did you?" "No..." "Sibling rivalry. Look it up sometime. It's the closest thing humans have to the relationship the younger Q have with one another." He sighed. "The trouble with analogies is that they oversimplify, of course. There's a lot I'm leaving out here, since I have no real words to express it. But I think you understand the basic idea." T'Laren nodded slowly. "That's very helpful, actually. Thank you." Q got up. "I think I need to rest for a while. I'm going to my room. You can call me for dinner whenever." Q's strength slowly came back to him over the next several days, at least to the point where he wasn't getting winded by walking around. T'Laren, as promised, had continued to allow him some degree of control over his own activities, as long as he was reasonable about it. He was therefore trying to be reasonable. It was difficult-- he was well aware that he was being manipulated into behavior that suited T'Laren, and every instinct he had shrieked at him to refuse to be manipulated, whatever the cost to himself might be. But the cost would be far too high, in this case. He knew that, even if every so often he had to remind himself-- or, more usually, T'Laren had to remind him. So he ate when she told him he had to-- which was getting easier; his appetite was improving, a good sign according to T'Laren-- and exercised when she told him to, despite the fact that any kind of physical activity embarrassed him and hurt like hell. He protested when he could. The damnable thing about Vulcans, though, was that they always had logical reasons why you had to do what they said. For instance, when T'Laren demanded that Q let her teach him how to swim, he'd thought he had her. "What possible use could I have for learning to swim?" he'd asked, smugly sure there couldn't be any. "It's valuable exercise. And it'll be less painful for you than calisthenics or other forms of physical activity." "Less painful in your opinion. I'm not terribly fond of getting cold, or wet, or of breathing some medium other than an oxygen/nitrogen mixture." "It may also be useful in a dangerous situation." Now he had her. "I spend most of my time in space. And if I did go to the surface of a planet, rest assured I'd stay far away from the water. How could I possibly be in a situation where I would need to swim?" "Suppose you were being chased by an assassin. You have no communicator and no vehicle--" "Why am I on a planetary surface?" "Say we were forced to make an emergency landing. I am nowhere around. Maybe I'm dead, maybe I'm injured. There's a Federation settlement on the other side of a river, and the assassin's slower than you are-- you could easily outrun it and reach the Federation colony if there weren't a river in your way. What are you going to do? Sit on the bank and whimper until the assassin catches up to you? Or try to swim the river?" She was far too good at using logic against him. It just wasn't fair. To make matters worse, she kept providing him with things that felt pleasant. After he complained about the swimming pool being cold, for instance, she had a small, shallow portion of it partitioned off and made into a hot bath. Li had prescribed hot baths for tension two and a half years ago, when Q had acquired his antique bathtub. Then Anderson had taken away the bathtub a year ago when he'd tried to kill himself in it. He hadn't been willing to admit quite how much he'd missed hot baths since. Now T'Laren could hold out the promise of a long warm soak if he cooperated with her and let her teach him swimming. It was classical carrot-and-stick training, and he should have been far too sophisticated for it to work. But it did, dammit. Even though he knew perfectly well what she was doing, he couldn't help responding to it. Despite himself, he was actually beginning to trust her. If he had thought that she was brainwashing him, or undermining his ability to take care of himself, he would have been able to resist. Q had spent millions of years fighting off attempts to undermine his identity or his self-will. That, he was sure he could resist. Short of euphoric drugs, no pleasure any mortal could give him could make him completely yield control of himself to someone else. But he had to admit that what she was doing was strengthening him. Though he ached from her exercise sessions, he did know that they were designed to help him protect himself, and that made the pain fractionally more bearable. She was also training him in meditative techniques. To both of their surprise, Q took to meditation right away. It was less surprising in hindsight-- though a human with his personality would be utterly unsuited to meditative disciplines, the sort of intense inward concentration that humans used in meditation was analogous to a frequent state among the Q, and so in a certain respect it was something he was already an expert on doing. He just hadn't known he could apply his experience to his new state. And to a certain extent, of course, he could not. He could use a trance state to overcome boredom or mild discomfort, such as tense muscles; real pain, however, disrupted his concentration completely. T'Laren said it would be something he'd need to practice. "Your experience as an energy being doesn't apply when pain enters the picture. Don't be spoiled by how quickly you learned the techniques-- you'd never have managed it if you hadn't been learning something you already knew from your past life." "So I might as well forget about learning to overcome pain." "If you set your mind to it, you can probably eventually develop the ability to overcome most pain. Never all, but then, not even Vulcans can overcome all pain. It'll take you a long time, though." "A long time" was meaningless to Q. He could look ahead a year, maybe two; beyond that, he truly didn't expect to live. Either he would be omnipotent again, in which case pain would be irrelevant, or he would be dead. His mind flinched away from exploring the possibilities of anything longer-range; a strange attitude, for a being who had once made plans in terms of millenia, but the idea of living eighty or ninety more years in this body frightened him almost as much as-- and sometimes more than-- the notion that he wouldn't. As far as he was concerned, then, if it would take what a Vulcan considered a long time, it was outside the realm of what he could hope for. But even the little he could do was a vast improvement. When he started to feel paranoid again, to feel as if T'Laren was undermining his identity, he reminded himself of what she had given him. She had helped him to free himself from the tyranny of boredom; for that alone, he should fall at her feet and worship her. Someone who was trying to break him to her will wouldn't give him such a powerful tool of resistance. Even still, he wouldn't be himself if he bent completely to another's will, and losing his identity had been his only real fear for far too long for him to put it aside now, even as a mortal with so many more relevant things to fear. There were still some areas where T'Laren was unyielding, such as the question of his sedatives. He had pleaded with her on several occasions, to no avail. It was T'Laren's opinion that he wouldn't have nightmares if he wasn't constantly trying to circumvent them with drugs. "Explain then why I've had nightmares every night since I came aboard your starship," he challenged. They were sitting at dinner; in an hour or two, Q would probably go to bed, and he'd wanted to make one last try at getting his sedatives before he did. "Or why I had them every night that I didn't take sedatives back when I was stockpiling them." T'Laren raised an eyebrow. "Why were you stockpiling sedatives?" "I thought that Anderson would use them as some more ammunition to hold over my head." "Is there a particular reason why you thought so?" Q sighed theatrically. T'Laren seemed constitutionally incapable of giving a straight answer. Everything he asked her was an excuse for her to ask him questions. "She used everything else as ammunition; why not that?" "Yes, but you must have perceived the danger as greater than usual, or you wouldn't have bothered. If your medical records are correct, you were permitted to replicate one sedative dose per night, is that right?" "More or less." "So in order to stockpile sedatives, you would have had to go without. Faced with a choice between certainly going without at the moment and possibly going without in the future, you would ordinarily have chosen the second alternative. The only reason you might have chosen a certainty over a possibility is if you considered that possibility almost a certainty itself. You must have been very sure that Anderson would do such a thing." Put that way, it did seem like an unlikely thing for him to have done-- planning ahead hadn't been Q's strong point since he became mortal. "I first started it after Li said I couldn't have painkillers anymore except in an emergency. I was afraid he'd cut my prescription. Then I tried to get Anderson to get Li to give me the painkillers back-- I told her I couldn't concentrate on my work if I was in pain. She said she wasn't going to override the chief medical officer's decision on a medical matter, and maybe I should learn to overcome minor discomforts. When I said I couldn't, she said I'd have to learn to overcome boredom, then. She was always trying to blackmail me into doing things." "Into doing your job, was my understanding," T'Laren said. "I made an agreement with Starfleet," Q snapped. "They would protect me, and I'd teach anyone they sent to me. Well, they fell down on their side of it a good number of times, too. Did Anderson tell you about the time that Security tried to kill me? Or about the six or seven times that various assassins got through the base's security and nearly finished me off? Did she by any chance mention the time that a telepath simply walked up to me and stabbed me in the gut, when there was an entire security escort around me-- after I'd *warned* her to use telepathic security to protect me? She claimed that she couldn't get hold of psis on short notice, that we would have to make do with a handful of Vulcans and a human `sensitive'. Sensitive as a rock! *He* didn't do me any good." T'Laren's eyes widened slightly. "No, she didn't tell me anything of the sort," she said. "What happened?" "Well... you've seen mention of the Maierlen assassin in my records." She nodded, sipping at fruit juice. "The one who tried to kill you with a swarm of insects." Q had been asleep, deep under the influence of his nightly drug, when a sudden pain had started to rouse him. Since he'd been sedated, it took two or three more of the sharp, stinging pains before he could come fully awake. There was an unpleasant crawling sensation on his skin, vaguely similar to what he'd felt when the Calamarain was attacking him. He had commanded the lights on, and seen three or four Maierlen waspoids, thick-bodied stinging insects that looked like a cross between Earth cockroaches and Earth wasps, crawling on him. There were several more of the bugs crawling on the sheets, making their way to him, and one or two flying at him. Since a starbase was normally a sanitary, vermin-free place, he had immediately known something was terribly wrong. He'd looked up at the air vent-- and seen a swarm of the creatures boiling out, the air churning and black with them. He had screamed for help the moment he saw the swarm; even still, by the time Security reached him he was more than half- dead, covered with stings and with insects crawling over every centimeter of his skin. Before that time, Q had had none of the normal human revulsion toward insects-- they were simply another form of life, no more repulsive than humans themselves. Since then, he had developed a powerful phobia of bugs and buglike things, as if the atavistic repulsion had been lurking in his human genes, waiting for circumstance to activate it. "Right," he said, trying to dispel the memory. "Natives of the planet Maierle are powerful telepaths, who generally exist in symbiosis with some animal partner-- a familiar, to use terms from Earth mythos. Normally Maierlen familiars are mammalian, and single animals; however, Maierlen assassins frequently employ entire swarms of insectoid or aquatic lifeforms as their familiars. I knew it was a Maierlen that was after me the moment I saw the insects; I also knew that he had to have used his telepathy to get himself and his bugs aboard, as the automatic defenses would've caught him if he tried to beam aboard secretly. He had to have walked in the front door, and just made everyone think that he wasn't smuggling a crate full of poisonous insects aboard." "And so you told Anderson...?" "I told her there was a dangerous telepath at large who wanted me dead and who could convince anyone without telepathic defenses-- which covered 99% of the starbase's personnel, including me-- that he wasn't there. She seemed to think the threat was negligible after we killed his bugs. I begged her to call in telepaths-- send to Betazed or Vulcan, there'd be tons. Instead, she figured we'd make do with six or seven Vulcans and the `sensitive', Agajanian." Q shook his head. "The assassin took out Agajanian-- apparently his `sensitivity' wasn't quite up to snuff-- and made everyone think he *was* Agajanian. Even Sekal was fooled. T'Meth might not have been-- Sekal says she's a better telepath than he is-- but she and the other Vulcans were off combing the base for the guy. And in the middle of a security escort, the assassin walked up to me and cut me open, because no one could see him for what he was until he attacked me." "I see." The memory of the incident-- his helpless fury when Anderson refused to take his advice, thus dooming him; his terror in the split-second before the knife went in, as the Maierlen dropped his illusion and let Q see what was about to happen to him-- reawakened rage at Anderson. Q stood up and began to pace. "You see what I was up against, all the time. Anderson had promised Starfleet she'd protect me, and failed miserably. She wasn't imcompetent; she'd never have gotten to where she was if she was, so what does that leave me to believe? If Anderson wanted me dead, if she couldn't be bothered keeping up her end of things, why should I whore for her? Why should I waste my time, which I now have precious little of, trying to teach the morons Starfleet would send me, putting on a vaudeville show to catch their microscopic attention spans and get the simplest concepts across to them, when Anderson couldn't be bothered to keep me from getting eviscerated in public?" T'Laren studied him for a few moments. "I see your point," she finally said. "In Anderson's defense, I think she did the best she could, for the most part; there may have been some reason she couldn't get more telepaths on short notice. She may have become entangled with some petty bureaucratic nonsense at Starfleet Command, and then presented their decision to you as her own out of loyalty to them. But certainly, with solely the information you've given me, it seems reasonable to believe that Anderson wasn't doing her job properly." "So if she didn't do her job, why should I do mine? Only it didn't work that way, you see, because she had the power and I didn't. Anything I depended on, Anderson would take great glee in cutting me off from if I did the slightest thing she didn't like. I wanted to have my own supply of sedatives so if she *did* cut me off, I could laugh in her face without worrying about the nightmares I'd have. And then we were working against the Borg, and I wasn't sleeping, most nights. And the nights I did, I couldn't afford to take a sedative. So whenever I thought of it, I'd get the computer to give me a sedative and then I'd stockpile it. They had about a three-month life span; I had something like thirty of them that were still good the night I took them all." He was growing more and more angry, as he remembered the increasingly severe restrictions that he'd been living under for over two years. "And then they did cut me off. I had to go to sickbay every night to get the damn things; do you think I enjoyed that? Especially after Security attacked me and I wasn't allowed to go anywhere without an escort? And explain to me the logic of *that*-- Security tried to kill Q, so let's not let him go anywhere without Security. Oh, that certainly makes sense. I didn't take the sedatives when I thought Security was going to kill me, since I didn't want to be asleep if they came for me, and I had utterly horrific nightmares constantly throughout that period. It just never fails. I always have nightmares unless I take the sedatives." T'Laren shook her head. "Q, it seems to me that every time you haven't taken the sedatives, you've been under some unusually severe emotional stress. Right now, you've left behind a place where you were reasonably secure and embarked into the unknown, certainly a stressful situation. The other occasions you describe-- fearing you would be blackmailed, fearing you would be killed, fearing the Borg... I know of few humans that wouldn't suffer nightmares under such circumstances. My point is that, if you learn to cope with the nightmares, rather than drugging yourself to avoid them, they will lessen in severity and eventually drop to a bearable level. Even human beings in conditions of chronic stress rarely suffer nightmares as consistently as you do; I think that's because you don't actually suffer nightmares as consistently as you claim." Q turned on T'Laren, startled. "You think I'm lying to you?" "No, no. You must realize that you dream every night, even under sedation. It's simply that when you are sedated, you sleep through the dreams, and don't remember them in the morning. You understand that, correct?" "Uh-- yes, I suppose so..." "In the first place, you have conditioned yourself to fear sleep. When you sleep without a sedative, you expect to have a nightmare, and so you have one. The fact that you are usually under stress when you go without sedatives intensifies the conditioning. In fact, you probably have nightmares rarely-- mostly only when you're not sedated. The dreams you normally have, the ones you don't remember, are ordinary dreams, without significant negative emotional content. If you stop taking the sedatives completely, your body will gradually become accustomed to the absence of sedative, and the conditioning will wear off." It sounded unlikely at best to Q, but T'Laren was adamant. So he had stopped trying to persuade her, and was approaching the problem from a different direction. Ketayas computer system was considerably less sophisticated than Starbase 56's. Actually, less sophisticated wasn't precisely accurate; many of its AI- style functions were far more sophisticated, since it was designed to be able to run the entire ship itself with only minimal humanoid input, if need be. But its security was laughable in comparison to the starbase's. Around the ninth day of their journey, Q managed to get the computer to recognize him as an authorized ship pilot, with all the same rights and privileges that T'Laren had. Using that status, he rewrote the restrictions list on his replicator so he could get anything he really wanted, including sedatives. He had written in a protection subroutine so that T'Laren would be notified if he got an overdose out of the replicators-- she had had a point, that he needed to be protected from himself to some degree-- but he figured he could take his nightly doses without her ever finding out. It gave him a small sense of triumph, to have pulled one over on her like that. He had begun to genuinely like T'Laren-- no big surprise there; as long as he wasn't gratitutiously obnoxious to her, she was consistently good to him, without being sappy or overemotional like Medellin had been. She would match wits with him when he threw down a challenge, and seemed to understand the difference between verbal sparring for pleasure and serious combat, something few people had ever grasped before. Her intentions were to help him, and he'd come to realize that she was reasonably competent at her job-- unlike Medellin, who hadn't understood him at all, she could perhaps carry through her intentions. But Q was incapable of letting anyone else dominate him. As much as he'd begun to trust her, he needed to have something over her, and the fact that he now had as much access to her computer as she did would do nicely. He also spent a great deal of time exploring the ship. There were crawlspaces and hatchways, ventilation systems and access corridors, running under the surface of the decks and behind the bulkheads. On Starbase 56, he had once grown sufficiently bored with the restricted area he was allowed to travel freely in that he had climbed into the accessways and explored them thoroughly. That knowledge had saved his life once. It stood to reason that it might again, so he wanted to be sure he knew Ketayathoroughly. He was not particularly well-suited to crawlspaces at his size, but he considered it important to do it. T'Laren didn't know about his explorations, and while he doubted that she would forbid them, or that she could come up with a sufficiently logical reason for forbidding him that he would listen to her, he preferred not to tell her. Q needed secrets, and he was spending far too much time revealing his to T'Laren. He had to make new secrets, to replace the ones he'd lost. Unfortunately, T'Laren had a habit of getting secrets out of him, one way or another.