ONLY HUMAN 

CHP. II: KETAYA

by Alara Rogers; published by Aleph Press

The following is section 7 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. 


*                              *                                *

     "Let's approach this from a different angle," she said. "I
have conceded your point that you are not addicted. You refuse to
concede mine that you are still leaning on a crutch. So let me
present another side of the argument." Her eyes bored into his.
"This morning, had it been an assassin entering your room and not
me, you would now be dead. You may argue that you miscalculated
the dosage-- I accept that. However, I believe I have evidence in
your files of an incident where you very nearly died-- and where
a scientist recently assigned to Starbase 56 *did* die-- because
you were sedated and didn't detect the entrance of an assassin.
Perhaps you remember the incident with the Ceulan assassin?"
     "It's `see-lan', not `soo-lan'," he said automatically, an
instinctive stalling mechanism. "You Texans are barbaric." He
remembered, of course. One didn't forget things like that.
     "I had never heard it pronounced. And don't evade the
question."
     "I'm not evading it. I remember the incident."
     It had been about the fifth month or so that he'd been on
the starbase. They were just beginning the work against the Borg,
and several top-notch scientists were being assigned to Starbase
56 for the duration of the invasion preparations. One of the
scientists had been n'Vala, a Timoxi whose job it was to bridge
the gap between Q's vast knowledge of physics and complete
ignorance of Starfleet technology. Another had been Evan Wagner,
a big, quiet xenopsychologist who was ostensibly there to learn
what Q knew about the psychology of the Borg.
     In fact, the person they all believed was Wagner had
actually been a Ceulan-- a shapechanger with numerous unusual
abilities, including the ability to detach parts of its body and
continue to control them from some distance. Q had awakened
groggily from drugged sleep to find Wagner leaning over him,
pinning his hands back over his head, against the sides of the
mattress. Before he could draw breath to scream, a third arm came
out of Wagner's chest and clamped over Q's mouth. When Wagner
backed away, detaching the three hands and leaving them behind to
hold Q's wrists and mouth, Q had known he was faced with a
Ceulan. He'd remembered far more than he wanted to about Ceulan
ritual executions, and had struggled desperately, adrenaline
chasing away the effects of the sedative. It had done him no
good. 
     The shapechanger had been quite thorough. Using Q's own form
and voice, it had the computer play music loudly from Q's
personal library, to drown out any sounds Q could make through
the gag. It had used two more hands to bind his legs, and then
began a recitation of the so-called atrocities Q had committed
against the Ceuli people. Ceuli had ritual executions designed
for many life forms; for humanoid criminals, the ritual involved
cutting through their breastbones, forcing open their ribcages,
and removing their hearts. There wasn't even any way Q could
plead his case or beg for mercy, let alone scream for help. He
could do nothing but moan with terror as the Ceulan formed one
appendage into a dense, sharp bone knife, sliced off his shirt,
and began to cut through the flesh above his breastbone.
     What saved him was n'Vala's lack of concern for human social
mores. Timoxi tended to be sociable to the point of pushiness,
and couldn't understand the human need for privacy. In theory,
none of the scientists were supposed to disturb Q after his
scheduled hours. N'Vala had always cheerfully ignored the
prohibition, and came by whenever he felt like it, with Q
perfectly free to boot him out whenever he felt like it. By
throwing things at him, Q had managed to teach n'Vala what Picard
had taught him a few months ago-- one did not disturb a sleeping
human. But n'Vala must have assumed that Q couldn't be asleep
tonight, not with the music playing so loudly, and with his usual
insouciance he walked right into the suite.
     This ended up being the last mistake he made. Though the
shapechanger, impersonating Q, tried to keep him out of the
bedroom, n'Vala, for reasons that would now always remain unknown
but that Q suspected simply involved reciprocating the
shapechanger's obnoxiousness, had pushed his way into the
bedroom. There he saw the real Q about to be killed, and for that
the shapechanger smashed in his skull. Timoxi, however, were
notoriously hard-headed. N'Vala managed to live through the
shapechanger's attacks long enough to get back into the hall,
where the commotion of his death attracted security. Q heard them
arriving, heard them shoot down the Ceulan with phasers on
maximum stun.
     He had thought security's arrival would mean the end of the
ordeal. He hadn't realized that maximum stun only paralyzed the
Ceulan, that it could still consciously direct the parts of its
body holding him. The moment the stun hit, the fleshy vises that
gripped Q's wrists and ankles began to tighten, snapping the
bones, while the protoplasmic thing gagging him crawled down his
throat and began to tear its way through his esophagus, reaching
for his windpipe and crushing it from inside. The sensation was
by far one of the most horrible he'd suffered. It wasn't fair. He
hadn't even done anything all that bad to the Ceuli, certainly
nothing deserving of this much pain and horror. 
     Through pain-blurred eyes, he saw Security clustered around
his bed, at a loss for what to do. They couldn't shoot the thing
in his throat-- maximum stun, at point-blank range against a
human head, would kill the human in question. He knew that Ceuli
were vulnerable to sonics, that they could save him if they only
knew-- but they didn't seem to know, and he had no way of telling
them. He was going to die from the ignorance of the protectors
he'd chosen. The roaring in his ears drowned out their words. In
despair, he had fallen to the darkness, expecting it to be death. 
     Later he'd awakened in sickbay-- someone had thought of the
sonics after all, it seemed. But he hadn't felt safe. The fact
that he had almost been killed so hideously in what should have
been his private sanctum had left him terrified of sleeping. He
had spent most of his nights in public places like the lounge,
nursing a dozen cups of coffee until he finally fell over from
exhaustion, and would usually get one or two hours of sleep in a
chair with his head pillowed on a table before Security would
come along and shoo him back to his room. It had been a week
before he felt secure enough to take his sedatives again.
     T'Laren said, "According to your files, you didn't hear the
assassin enter because you were sedated. You're supposed to be a
light sleeper. If you hadn't been drugged, you might well have
woken up in time to call for help-- which would not only have
spared you injury and a great deal of fear, but would have saved
Dr. n'Vala's life as well. You were unbelievably lucky, Q. You
may not be so fortunate another time."
     Q shook his head, trying to think of an argument to use
against that. In fact, for a little while after the attack he
himself had feared sedatives. He had had to convince himself into
taking them again, because sleep was a biological requirement of
his existence and he couldn't sleep without them, especially not
after that attack. "I doubt I'd have woken up in time anyway.
It's not as if the Ceulan forced the door-- it probably came in
through the vents. For all I know it could have been in my room
already, impersonating a piece of furniture or something, lying
in wait for me. The important consideration was that I was
asleep, not that I was sedated."
     "That's debatable. And whether or not it is true, it is all
too easy to imagine a situation in which an assassin's intrusion
*would* wake you, were you not sedated. My point stands
regardless."
     "So does mine! What alternative can you give me? I don't
like having to drug myself into insensibility to get to sleep,
no, but what choice do I have?" He got off the table and stood
up. "Since we started this trip I've slept miserably. I've woken
up three or four times a night-- you know about some of that,
because you keep calling to confirm if I'm all right. I feel
tired all the time. Last night was the first time in over a week
that I got a decent night's sleep, and you want me to give that
up without offering me anything in exchange?"
     "I'm offering increased safety, for one thing. And there are
ways we can deal with the problem of the nightmares. Had you
considered using the meditative techniques you've learned to help
you, for instance?"
     "I could use them for that?"
     T'Laren nodded. "The problem isn't simply that you're under
stress. You haven't yet developed proper adaptations for dealing
with stress. It's very easy to take comfort in drugs, just as
it's very easy to remain in a deep depressive state and make no
effort to pull yourself out. Both are counterproductive. If we
work on it together, we can help you to overcome the problem at
the source, without simply putting bandages on the symptoms."
     The idea of being free of the nightmares, without the thick
grogginess of the sedatives, was powerfully seductive. She was
doing it to him again, he realized-- carrot and stick training
again, even when he had as powerful a buttress as his computer
control. But then, yielding to carrot and stick training got him
lots of carrots. "Is there some technique for doing it? So that I
don't have to dream, or don't remember my dreams, or can control
them, or something?"
     "It's not as clear-cut as that," she said. "I can't teach
you a five-minute breathing exercise that can keep you from
dreaming. But for one thing, your dreams will become easier to
deal with as your health improves-- poor physical condition can
reflect itself in your mind. Exercise can help-- not only is
exercise relaxing, but it will make you sleep more deeply.
Meditation can do the same thing-- you can use meditation as a
tool for self-hypnosis. You may find that using self-hypnotic
techniques before you go to sleep, and telling yourself that you
will not have nightmares, or that you will retain some conscious
control over your dreams, may do most of the work for you. At the
same time, we can approach the problem from the opposite
direction. You're aware of the various theories regarding the
purpose of dreams?"
     "Which ones?"
     "Dreams tend to provide insights into one's mental state. We
might try examining your dreams and trying to analyze what they
mean to you."
     "Didn't dream interpretation go out with Freud?"
     T'Laren shook her head. "Freud's interpretation of dreams
went out with Freud. No one believes anymore that dreams are
primarily concerned with sex, for instance--"
     "That's a relief."
     She ignored the interruption. "But the basic idea that
dreams bear some relationship to the personality and current
mental state of the dreamer... that's held up for several hundred
years. Let me ask you something. What sort of dreams do you have?
What form do they take? You've told me you have constant
nightmares, but what kind of nightmares are they?"
     Q sighed theatrically. "Name a nightmare, any nightmare. I'm
sure I've had it."
     "The kind where you're at an important meeting and you
suddenly realize you have no clothes on?"
     "Okay, maybe there's one I haven't had." He straightened up
the chair he'd knocked over before and sat in it. "There's the
kind I mentioned a week ago where I have my powers back. That's
not a nightmare, strictly speaking, but it's in the same
ballpark. Then there's the kind where I lose my powers."
     "You relive the incident?"
     "No, it happens differently every time. I think I have my
powers and then I don't, or someone takes them away, or
something. Or sometimes I have my powers, but they don't work.
One time it turned out that I was a simulacrum created by the
real me to find out how he'd behave if he lost his powers. He was
*very* disappointed... There's something peculiarly horrifying
about being afraid of oneself. Actually, that's a theme that
turns up every so often, that the me in the dream-- the me that I
am, my point of view-- is human, and I meet a me that's still a
Q, and he tries to kill me. Or he does kill me. Or something else
reasonably horrible happens. Sometimes I have that kind of dream
from the other point of view as well, but that kind falls in the
category of dreams where I have my powers back, not dreams where
I lose them."
     T'Laren raised an eyebrow. "That's very interesting. Why
does the omnipotent side of you try to kill the mortal you?"
     Q shrugged. "Different reasons. He's disappointed in me, or
disgusted with me, or angry with me for destroying his life..."
It occurred to him that he had just handed T'Laren wonderful
ammunition for her theory that he hated himself. "In the ones
where I'm the omnipotent one, I'm embarrassed by the human me.
Here's this lowly, disgusting creature with bowel movements and
bodily secretions, who thinks he's *me*. I mean, consider the
arrogance of that."
     "I think that's worthy of a great deal of further
discussion, but let's not get sidetracked. Are there any other
kinds?"
     "Tons." He put a hand to his head and leaned on it, elbow
against the table. "Let's see, there's the kind where something
or other is chasing me. I have been chased all over the universe-
- most often through Starbase 56, but Starbase 56 generally ends
up turning into a planet, or an asteroid belt, or an nth-
dimensional plane, or something. Frequently I end up in places
where human beings can't survive, but that doesn't seem to matter
in the dream. Then there's the kind that rewrite history. For
instance-- I get versions of this one a lot-- dreams where I end
up getting handed over to the Borg, and they're going to
assimilate me... That one's very bad. Or dreams where the
Enterprise didn't beam me back when I tried to throw myself to
the Calamarain, or where various assassins who didn't actually
get me do, or where security tries to lynch me like I thought
they would do a year ago... You get the idea."
     "I think I do, yes. Do you have any pleasant dreams?"
     "The ones where I have my powers back are pleasant enough,
while they last," he said with a bitter half-smile. "There are
several kinds of dreams like that-- that are pleasant when I'm in
them, but upsetting or disturbing after I wake up." For instance,
the entire category of erotic dreams, though Q would have rather
had all his teeth yanked from his head than mention them.
     "Any genuinely pleasant ones? Or even nondescript dreams?"
     He shrugged. "Occasionally I have dreams that aren't
nightmares-- not particularly pleasant, but not really unpleasant
either. But not very often-- and I don't remember that kind as
well as the others."
     "Hm. I think perhaps it would help you if, from now on, when
you have particularly bad dreams, you tell me about them. We can
go over them and try to help you deal with whatever fears they
may represent. Obviously, this isn't mandatory. Anything you feel
should remain private, keep private. But it might help as a
catharsis to talk about some of the dreams after you have them."
     Q wasn't very comfortable with the notion of giving someone
that much insight into his mental processes. On the other hand,
he had already determined that his only chance of survival was to
trust T'Laren, and another part of him enjoyed telling her about
himself. There did seem to be some kind of cathartic value in
sharing his fears with her. And if it helped to overcome the
nightmares, he would put up with the invasion of privacy, as long
as he could control the degree of the invasion. "I... all right,
if you really think that might help."
     "And I think that you should relinquish control of your
computer access."
     "Excuse me?"
     T'Laren steepled her hands on the table. "As matters stand
now, you can override me any time you desire."
     "I gave you back your access."
     "You did. And I'm grateful. But you can take that access
away any time I do something you don't like. Q, we've established
fairly well that I get very poor results when I try to coerce you
into something. It would be illogical for me to use that
technique unless you force me to it. But if it does become
necessary to force you to do something, because you are being
shortsighted or unreasonable again, I need to have the power to
do that. In a doctor-patient relationship, it must be the doctor
who has the power. If you've studied hierarchies among mortals
for as long as you say, you should know that."
     "I told you, I'm being reasonable. As long as *you* treat me
with some respect and don't act like you think you're my mother,
I'm not going to be unreasonable."
     "You can't guarantee that." 
     "Why not?" This was an upsetting development. "You don't
trust me?"
     "It's not a question of trust. I trust you to do what you
are capable of... but I don't think you are invariably capable of
being rational. You may suffer a spasm of depression or paranoia,
you may feel unwell and take it into your head to be ornery about
it... there are any number of potential reasons you might behave
irrationally. You cannot entirely trust yourself, Q; how can you
ask me to?"
     "But I wouldn't *do* anything. I just want to be able to
keep you from forcing me to do things."
     "In the end, the only weapon I can hold over your head is
the fact that you need me," she said. "And that applies as much
if you have control of the computers as if you don't."
     "Well, what do you want me to do? I'm better with computers
than you are-- you can't take that away, it isn't possible. How
am I supposed to relinquish my access?"
     She hesitated. "I'm sure this must be possible-- couldn't
you write some sort of security program and have it authorized to
my voiceprint?"
     Q stared at her for a second, then laughed. "You want *me*
to create an override program for *you*."
     T'Laren tilted her head slightly in a Vulcan shrug. "I have
access to no other computer experts."
     "Do you realize how ridiculous that sounds? You really
expect me to write a program that locks me out of the computers?"
     "I would like you to, yes."
     "And you would trust me to do this?"
     "Q, I cannot do my job if you can threaten me. You perceive
your ability to lock me out of the computers as defensive; to me,
however, it's a threat, and it's impossible for me to guide
someone who can do that. I'm not asking you to cut yourself off
from the computers entirely; I just need the ability to override
any of your commands if necessary. And I would not abuse such
power or use it arbitrarily. I think you know me that well by
now. So yes-- keeping all that in mind, I believe that if you
agree to do this for me at all that I can trust you to do it
properly. I believe you can understand the need for this."
     "T'Laren, I told you. I want to be an equal partner in this.
I don't want to go around dominating you-- I just want to be
equal."
     "You can't afford to be," she said gently. "Not yet. You're
not well enough."
     He wanted, very badly, to reject her request out of hand, to
dismiss her fears as paranoid or as a misunderstanding of him. He
*wouldn't* abuse his power. He'd promised. But... she was right,
and he knew it. Doctor-patient relationships couldn't work if the
two were on an equal footing, especially not psychiatric
relationships. He knew that objectively, from his studies of
thousands of species... he'd just been hoping it didn't apply to
him.
     He sighed. "All right then. Get me something to eat and I'll
write you a program."

     It took about an hour to write a security override for
T'Laren. He sat at a terminal, using keyboard input rather than
programming through voice commands because the deep code levels
couldn't handle voice input well, munching on various snacks that
T'Laren brought him. She spent the rest of her time looking over
his shoulder, as if staring at the screen would enlighten her any
better as to what he was doing. Q finally turned in exasperation.
"Could you please not do that? I can't work with you watching me
like that."
     "Of course. Forgive me."
     He was getting more and more depressed. Voluntarily giving
up his own power to someone else was not in his nature, and it
was upsetting him deeply that T'Laren had managed to talk him
into this. To hell with logic-- logic was T'Laren's field, not
his. He should never have started this, should never have
offered-- but if he turned around intending to quit, there was
T'Laren, expectantly waiting for him to finish. Trusting him. 
     On the other hand, he had never asked T'Laren to trust him--
not on this subject, at least. *Caveat emptor, my Vulcan friend*.
As he worked, he wrote himself in a back door, so that in a
genuine emergency he could always override T'Laren's override and
get back into the system. He then finished setting up the
program, cycled it and spun around in his chair. "It's all yours.
Put in a password and tell it to run."
     "Thank you." T'Laren bent over the keyboard as Q moved
aside, ostentatiously not looking at her. 
     "Password accepted," the computer said. "Activating security
screen."
     That was it. Q felt a curious sense of deflation. He could
now no longer create a program that affected system operations
without T'Laren's authorization, not unless he used his back door
and if he ever did that, its usefulness as a trump card was gone.
Eventually, he thought, perhaps a few months from now, he'd tell
T'Laren he had it and that he'd never used it, a graphic
demonstration that he was more trustworthy than she'd thought.
And then maybe she'd let him have equal authorization access
anyway, after he'd proven he could refrain from abusing power.
Maybe that would win brownie points with Lhoviri too-- part of
the reason they'd thrown him out was the abuse of power. 
     T'Laren turned to him and smiled, a genuine brilliant smile.
"Thank you, Q," she said, with feeling. "I know how difficult
that was for you."
     More difficult than she knew, apparently, since in the end
he hadn't gone through with it. The smile made him feel vaguely
guilty-- he had left himself a back door, after all. He hadn't
actually done what she wanted. But he steeled himself against the
guilt, reminding himself that T'Laren had been foolish to trust
him so far, that he'd warned her, and that her decision to show
him a smile had to be manipulation. T'Laren might have emotions,
but she was as adept at hiding them as any Vulcan. If she smiled,
it was because she consciously decided to. That made him feel a
bit better.
     "What, writing the program? That wasn't difficult," he said,
pretending to misunderstand. "I'm no computer genius, T'Laren,
but that was child's play."
     She shook her head slightly. "The program itself was easy,
I'm sure. Agreeing to create it was difficult for you, though--
especially since it would have been so easy for you to subvert
the purpose somehow, to create a program that doesn't work or
that you can override. I'm very glad that you resisted the
temptation."
     Which went to show how well she could read *him*, since he
hadn't-- and then he realized that it *did* show how well she
could read him. She knew. She had to know.
     The realization must have shown on his face, but she said
nothing about it. "Do you feel up to our daily workout?"
     If she wasn't going to mention it, he was going to
diligently pretend that nothing was wrong. "When do I ever feel
up to a workout?" 
     "Do you feel less up to it than usual, then?"
     "I suppose not," he grumbled. He stood up. "Perhaps some
exercise will either wake me up or give me a legitimate excuse to
take a nap."