Only Human

Part III: Yamato

Starfleet officers live for challenge, Commander Derek Wilde repeated silently to himself, like a mantra. We love it. We thrive on it.

It wasn't working.

Captain Okita had smiled when he said it. "I think it would be good practice for you to have primary responsibility for the conference, Mr. Wilde," he'd said cheerfully. "Hone your diplomatic skills. Give you a wider range of command experience." What he meant was, "I don't want to be bothered babysitting these people, so I'm sticking you with it, Derek." Thank you so much, kindly mentor Okita.

It was, he was sure, a recipe for sure disaster. Take 40 of the most brilliant-- and most temperamental-- minds in the Federation. Bring them together on a single Galaxy-class starship for a scientific conference regarding a singularity sitting squatly just out of range to suck Yamato into itself. Oh, and add that the science officer for that Galaxy-class starship, Lieutenant Commander Shahrazad Dhawan, was herself one of the most brilliant and temperamental minds in the Federation, that she had very strong opinions on the nature of the singularity and resented the hell out of the decision to have a scientific conference. Further stipulate that because of the science officer's passionate and highly undiplomatic nature, most of the science department's liaison duties to the conference were being carried out by a naive young Vulcan, who would have been described as an airhead had she not been a phenomenal genius, since her innocence of other species' ways was as great as her intellect. All in all, Wilde was convinced that the conference was a disaster waiting to happen.

He was now attempting to convince himself that Yamato's science officer was not totally insane. "You pulled a knife on Dr. Morakh."

Dhawan nodded, completely unapologetic. "You ever been to a Klingon scientific conference, Commander? That's an accepted part of scientific debate."

"You are not a Klingon, Dhawan! You're a Starfleet officer!"

"Yes, but I was debating with a Klingon. You have to speak to people in a language they understand."

"So speak to him in Klingon. Don't pull a knife on him! My God, what if he'd attacked you and you'd killed him? Or he'd killed you?"

"I'm good enough not to get killed in a debate. And he'd never have achieved his current level of pre-eminence in the scientific world if he was careless enough to get killed by a human woman with a pocketknife."

"That thing was hardly a pocketknife, mister."

Lieutenant Sovaz, watching the debate with interest, piped up. "Actually, it was a ceremonial dagger of the Cianni, used for combats in their mating and political rituals. Commander Dhawan received it from the Cianni when she defeated--"

"Enough, Sovaz," Dhawan snapped. The young Vulcan woman quieted instantly.

"Do you understand the diplomatic ramifications of this? A Starfleet officer attacked a Klingon scientist with a ceremonial dagger?"

"I didn't attack him," Dhawan protested. "I pulled it out and told him I'd cut off his balls if he insulted my methodology one more time. And you should have heard his insults, Commander. I would have lost face if I hadn't threatened him."

"I don't care about your lost face! This is a Starfleet vessel, one of the premier vessels of the fleet. We have an example--"

Dhawan smiled innocently. "We also have an obligation to honor other people's cultures, don't we?"

Wilde controlled the urge to punch her. "We are hosting a multi-species conference of highly touchy and incompatible people. We have a Klingon and his retinue. We have a Tellarite. We have two Andorians and a Nausicaan. We have a Cardassian-- on a ship where the Counselor we're relying on to help mediate is Bajoran. We have a large number of very volatile human personalities. Scheduled to come aboard still, we have a Romulan woman, a former energy being who specialized in harassing people for several million years, and a woman from god only knows what species with god only knows what problems. The only way we're going to keep control of this madhouse is to follow Starfleet diplomatic guidelines. And that means that you are going to control your temper, is that understood, mister?"

"Understood, Commander," Dhawan said calmly. Meaning, most likely, "I'll say whatever you want and then do what I like, Commander."

Wilde felt he hadn't made his point, and opened his mouth to start again, when his communicator went off. "Wilde here."

"Sir, Ketaya is docking. Q will be coming aboard in a few minutes."

"My favorite," Wilde muttered. "Acknowledged." He turned toward the door. "Mr. Sovaz, meet me in the main transporter room in ten minutes."

"Aye, sir."

Lieutenant Sovaz often found humans hopelessly confusing.

This was hardly a surprise. Sovaz often found Vulcans hopelessly confusing as well. She had long ago accepted that she simply didn't live in the same universe as most people, whatever their species, and yet she still persisted in the belief that on some level, others must be fundamentally like her. She was puzzled by Commander Dhawan's unwillingness to meet the scientists as they came aboard-- Sovaz herself couldn't wait until they were all aboard. "We're going to meet some of the greatest minds in the Federation," Sovaz had said three days ago. "I would think that a human would be excited by the opportunity."

Dhawan had grinned. "Does that mean that you're excited, Sovaz?"

It was not very Vulcan to admit to a human that one was excited. "I confess I'm looking forward to this with great anticipation," Sovaz said instead.

"Well, I'm glad someone is," Dhawan had said, and had never explained to Sovaz why she didn't feel the excitement Sovaz would expect a human to feel. Or why no one else on the ship seemed to feel such excitement, either.

Earlier today, when Sovaz had been told that Q was expected to arrive today, she had, in fact, felt excitement. She had performed a calming exercise, but had to admit that it had not been entirely successful. Everyone else who was coming aboard was brilliant, a scientific luminary, someone Sovaz looked up to and respected. But all of them had acquired their knowledge from more or less the same places Sovaz had acquired hers. Q had millions of years of experience in practical physics, and had once known literally everything there was to know about the physical universe. Even now, if her understanding of his situation was correct, he knew more or less everything it was possible for a human being to comprehend. Q could answer any question Sovaz had-- all she had to do was think of the right questions to ask. It was quite a thrilling notion, and not entirely illogical that she should feel excitement at such a prospect. Curiosity was an accepted emotion, after all. If anyone had asked Sovaz if she were excited right now, she would have in all honesty had to answer "yes."

And yet...

She heard Tanai, the comm officer, say to Wilde, "Ketaya is docking," and it blotted out the pleasure she'd expected to feel at the prospect of meeting Q. The word ketaya was a reminder of a grief she had never entirely been able to overcome. Sovaz held her face as still as she could as she acknowledged Wilde's order. But she walked to the transporter room more slowly than usual, and fought for mastery of feelings she had never truly been able to deny.

To most Vulcans, a ketaya was a nuisance, flying in windows left open and stealing shiny objects, or digging through improperly covered refuse. On her Kahs-wan, Sovaz had seen a ketaya digging out the eyes of a dead sahar, a sleek predator of the mountains. They were much like Terran magpies or ravens, scavengers and tricksters, and unlike their Terran counterparts the ketayas were green, the exact shade of blood. None of this meant much to modern Vulcans. When Sovaz had been a child, though, the ketaya was a magic bird, harbinger of death and transformation in the ancient myths her older sister would tell her.

She remembered sitting on T'Laren's lap, transfixed by the visions a tale invoked in her. T'Laren would change her voice when she spoke different parts-- high and sweet for a ketaya, growling and gruff for a sehlat, cruel and bitter for a le'matya. Or she would tell stories of ancient gods, when creatures far beyond the ken of mortals walked the surface of Vulcan. Sovaz knew perfectly well that such stories were illogical-- sehlats did not really talk, and she was quite positive that even in the days before Surak gods did not walk around on Vulcan-- but she didn't care. The stories were fun, and if her older sister chose to tell them to her, who was she, a small child, to contradict her elders?

Sometimes there had been conflicts. She remembered once, when T'Laren had been telling her a story, her brother Soram entered the room and stared. Sovaz squirmed slightly, uncomfortable under her elder brother's gaze. She knew, though she was not sure how, that Soram disapproved.

"You should not fill the child's head with lies, T'Laren," he'd said. Actually, he'd said "my betrothed one," not "T'Laren", and after they actually got married he always called T'Laren "wife." Sovaz didn't know why. Mother and Father called each other by their proper names.

T'Laren had shaken her head. "Is that all you can see in the old stories, Soram? Lies?"

"They are obviously not true. Therefore they are lies. I don't see how that is a difficult conclusion to draw."

"Simply because they're not true doesn't make them lies. That's a very black and white argument." T'Laren had gently removed Sovaz from her lap. "Embedded in a fictional story can be powerful truths, that would sound insipid if simply stated flatly. Some truths require the resonance of symbolism. And children are well-equipped to interpret symbolism, better than they are to interpret plain facts."

"You speak of human children, betrothed. Not Vulcans."

"There is little difference at Sovaz's age."

"And you, of course, are an expert on the raising of Vulcan children."

T'Laren had raised her eyebrow. "You are not my father, betrothed. Nor are you hers. If you have a difficulty with my treatment of your little sister, take it up with your father. Should he choose to ask that I stop, I will obey." She had turned back to Sovaz as Soram left, stiff-shouldered. "Now where were we?"

Not all her stories were of Vulcan's past. Sometimes she told stories of Earth, which seemed as distant and impossible a place as the once-upon-a-time land where Vulcan's ancient myths took place. Sovaz had protested and called her a liar when T'Laren told her that water fell out of the sky on Earth, and that every ten or fifteen years it did the same thing on Vulcan. T'Laren had shown her holotapes to prove it. And sometimes, T'Laren had said, it grew very cold on Earth, and the water that fell from the sky froze to ice before it hit the ground. But it formed very tiny, powdery, white ice crystals that covered the ground like sand, and that human children would play in, bundled in warm clothing. Sovaz found this as likely as the notion of talking ketayas, but T'Laren assured her that it was true. And if that could be true, then anything could be. The universe was full of wonders. As Sovaz had grown older and T'Laren had advanced in Starfleet, T'Laren would come home on leave with more wondrous stories of places she had visited. Sovaz determined to follow her parents' and brother's footsteps into Starfleet, not for their sake, but for the stories T'Laren told her.

Two years ago, T'Laren had stolen a shuttle and thrown herself out into the skies over Vulcan, ending her stories forever.

Grief was appropriate, was proper, at a loss of such magnitude. But it was the Vulcan way to grieve and then to master the grief, to remember the life without pain. And Sovaz could not. After two years, she still grieved. There was a question left unanswered, and Sovaz, who would not acknowledge that any mystery must remain forever unsolved, was forced to face the fact that she would never learn why her older sister died. If it had been an accident, she could research the cause and comprehend it, someday; if it had been murder, she could have questioned the killer. But T'Laren's murderer was forever beyond questioning.

It made no sense. Why would anyone kill themselves? It went against the most fundamental drives of any sentient race! It was illogical in the extreme, and the explanations Sovaz had been given were no explanations at all. Words like "unwell" were used to describe T'Laren, before her death-- as if Sovaz, an ensign in Starfleet at the time, was too much of a child to understand the truth. After her death, occasionally the word "insane" was used. But that explained nothing. Had T'Laren been too mad to know what she was doing? Had she believed she could breathe in space, that she would fly among the stars without a ship? Or had she known what she was doing? And if she had, how could she have done it? How could she have abandoned those who cared for her?

Sovaz had questioned Soram, sure that T'Laren's bondmate had to have known what was going through her mind-- but Soram told her that he had kept his mind closed to T'Laren since her insanity first manifested. The final communication he had with her, her deathcry, was the first he'd had in months. And when Sovaz asked if he had sensed anything in that final cry as to her emotions-- did she feel triumph? release? despair? joy?-- he looked at her as if she had committed an obscenity and said that he would not speak of it.

Today she was to meet a person who knew the answers to all the questions Sovaz might have, except for that one-- why did T'Laren kill herself? And she would give up the answers to all the other questions, she would give up this opportunity she'd been given, if only she could learn the answer to that one...

But that was foolishness. Sovaz forced composure. She should concentrate on the opportunities she did have. And concentrate on doing her job, and making Q feel welcome here.

She entered the transporter room. Counselor Tris and Security Chief Washington were already there, Washington in a dress uniform and Tris in what Sovaz presumed was a Bajoran dress uniform. When Tris wore a uniform at all, it was a Bajoran military uniform; he wasn't Starfleet, exactly. Sovaz made sure she was composed, and took a deep breath.

Commander Wilde came in. "Q's party is ready to beam up, sir," the transporter chief told him.

"Right. Energize."

For a moment, as the shimmering forms took solidity on the transporter platform, Sovaz saw the man she had come to greet, a tall slender human. Then her attention was entirely caught by his companion. She stared at the Vulcan woman materializing, unable to believe her eyes. Could it possibly be true? Somehow, some way, could Soram have been wrong?

Then the two had fully materialized, and Sovaz was sure. Emotions surged in her, beyond all hope of control. "T'Laren!" she cried, and lunged forward, breaking ranks. "Sister! You're alive!"

T'Laren stepped back slightly and studied her with the same utter coldness Soram had given her when she had been overemotional. "Lieutenant Sovaz," she said in a coolly correct voice, obviously reading Sovaz's rank from her pips. "I was unaware that you had been posted to Yamato."

Sovaz stepped backward in bewilderment and growing mortification. Why was T'Laren being so cold? So... traditionalist? Was she ashamed of Sovaz for the emotions Sovaz had shown? She must be, yet why? It wasn't like T'Laren to reprove Sovaz for emotions-- maybe she was wrong and it wasn't really T'Laren? But no, it had to be-- how would she have known Sovaz's name?

Commander Wilde stepped forward, hastily filling the awkward moment with talk. "Welcome to the Yamato. I'm Commander Derek Wilde, first officer. I'm responsible for the conference."

Q watched the interchange between Sovaz and T'Laren with dawning interest. It seemed perhaps that this conference would be far more entertaining than he'd thought. He was slightly amused at Wilde's attempt to cover, and decided to make life difficult for the man. "So the captain doesn't think I'm worthy of his personal attention, is that it?"

"Not at all!" Wilde said stoutly. "Captain Okita will see you after you've had time to get settled in and comfortable. He believes people should be at ease before meeting with ship's captains. This is our security chief, Lieutenant Ken Washington--" a tall human with curly, chocolate-brown hair and big blue eyes, who looked far too young for his job and far too serious for his youth-- "Counselor Tris--" a male Bajoran in a non-Starfleet uniform with black hair and strangely feral dark eyes, who was glaring at T'Laren-- "and Lieutenant Sovaz, science liaison to the conference. And you must be Q, right?"

That was a space-filler question if Q ever heard one. He jerked his thumb at T'Laren. "No, she's Q. I'm A."

T'Laren said severely, in her I-Am-The-Ultimate-Vulcan voice, "I am Doctor T'Laren, Q's psychiatrist."

"Ah." Wilde nodded. "Pleased to meet you, Doctor." He turned back to Q. "Sovaz'll take you to your quarters, get you--"

"I would prefer another guide, Commander," T'Laren said in the same icy voice.

"Fine," the Bajoran snapped. "I'll do it." He grabbed T'Laren's arm and tugged her off the platform with a complete lack of diplomacy. Q smiled, intrigued. This was getting better and better.

In the corridor, Tris snapped, "What the hell are you trying to pull, T'Laren?"

"I am not trying to 'pull' anything."

"Don't give me that shit! I want an explanation-- if for nothing else, then what you did to Sovaz. That was just inexcusable."

"I have no desire to discuss it," T'Laren said, glancing back at Q.

"Fine. We'll talk later." Tris released T'Laren's arm and strode ahead.

"Hardly a very diplomatic young man, is he," Q murmured. "Though for a Bajoran, I suppose he's a radiant source of goodwill."

"Q. Be quiet."

"So what's this about your sister? I'm astonished, T'Laren. You told me you had no siblings. Was this perhaps an oversight?"

"I have no sister."

"Sovaz seemed to believe otherwise."

"Sovaz is mistaken. She is not my sister."

"And that solves everything, doesn't it?" Tris muttered, loudly enough to be audible to Q.

He palmed open a door. "These are your quarters. There's two bedrooms, with individual locks, and a living room and bathroom accessible from both. Here--" he handed Q a round badge of some sort-- "is your guest combadge. If you need anything, don't hesitate to call."

"Can I have a Starfleet uniform?" Q asked. "Red."

Tris seemed to think about it. "Mmmm-- no," he said decisively.

"Why not?"

"Stop it," T'Laren said sharply.

"Because you're not Starfleet," Tris said, "and if I can't have a Starfleet uniform, neither can you. Sorry, but them's the breaks." He stepped into the quarters. "If you want to freshen up, the bathroom's over there."

Q wondered if he should take the hint, and decided not to. This was far too amusing. "I'll keep it in mind," he said cheerily.

"I believe I would like to," T'Laren said, starting for the bathroom.

"Oh no you don't," Tris said, grabbing hold of her arm. "You and I need to talk."

He tugged her out of the room. Q started to follow, and Tris pressed the manual override button to close the door, in Q's face.

Well. This was hardly diplomatic treatment. Q smiled nastily. The doors were soundproof, but there was a little trick he had learned, that perhaps Tris didn't know about. He hit the internal manual button to open the door and immediately afterward hit the button to close. This had the unfortunate side effect-- if it was done right-- of jamming the door a crack open, just enough that sound could come through.

"First of all, you don't tell me you're alive," he heard Tris say angrily. "Did it ever occur to you that there are people who care if you're alive or not? Though after what you just did to Sovaz, I'm not sure why I should. And second of all, why the hell did you try to kill yourself in the first place? You know better than that! Why didn't you get help? And first of all, what you just did to Sovaz is inexcusable! What's gotten into you? That kid worships you. She cried when she heard you'd killed yourself! In the first place, I can't see how you could hurt anyone like that, let alone someone as innocent as Sovaz. Your own sister!"

"Sovaz is not my sister--"

"Don't give me that! You called her your sister for the past five years--"

"You don't understand," T'Laren said coldly. "Sovaz is Soram's sister. When Soram was my husband, Sovaz was my sister. Now that I am no longer married to Soram, I no longer consider Sovaz my relative."

"Oh. I see. All your relationships change completely because you're not married anymore. And I suppose I'm no longer your taran, right? After all, you're not married, so that doesn't apply."

The word didn't translate. Q decided to wait for a lull in the conversation before looking it up. Tris continued. "So you don't feel anything for her at all, that's what you're saying? You're just like, oh, well, I guess I don't know her anymore. And even that wouldn't excuse you! Unless you positively hated the kid, you have no excuse for hurting her like that."

"She's Vulcan. She'll cope."

"So if I'd casually told all your co-workers the things you told me in confidence, you'd have coped, because you're Vulcan. Right?"

"I was probably too unwell to cope at the time."

"Oh, but you're fine now. Obviously you've got back your license to practice. Or have you? Does your patient know about your little nervous breakdown? Who re-certified you anyway?"

"Starfleet Medical--"

"And how'd you explain to them how you miraculously survived? 'Oh, I threw myself out of my shuttle, but fortunately a passing inbound space freighter just happened to notice, and beamed me aboard.' Or let me guess. Vulcans can survive up to ten minutes in vacuum, right? Because you're so superior to all the rest of us poor species?"

"I told them my family had been mistaken in certifying me dead." Her voice held just the faintest trace of bitterness. Three weeks ago, Q would never have detected it-- but he heard it now, and he was willing to bet the Bajoran did too. "Soram was divorcing me, after all. He had already severed our link. He could easily have mistaken my death."

"So he divorced you. Well. I'm glad I found that out. That's more than anyone else seems to know. Is that why he said you were dead, then? Because a dead wife is easier to explain than a divorce? Can divorced Vulcans remarry?"

"Of course they-- Soram remarried? You know this?"

"Sovaz told me. And incidentally, she keeps referring to the woman as 'my brother's wife.' Not 'sister'." Tris paused. "Oh, come on, T'Laren. Don't tell me you still care about him. Not after what he did to you!"

"You know nothing about it. You never understood my relationship with Soram."

"No, and I don't think I ever will. I thought Vulcans were too logical to stay in abusive relationships."

Now she sounded angry. "Soram did not abuse me. What happened was my fault, and there was nothing he could have done to save me. He did try, you know. He was never the monster you thought he was."

"Sovaz told me he said he closed his mind to you, when you went off the deep end. I'm sure that did you a lot of good."

"Was he supposed to let me infect him? Few Vulcans can risk being bonded to one who is insane--"

"You keep using that word. You know better. What you had was a nervous breakdown. You did not go insane, T'Laren. Not by any definition I ever learned."

"What a Bajoran-- or a human-- would consider insanity, and what a Vulcan would, are two different things."

"Yes, obviously. Since I can't think of a reason for what you did to Sovaz short of that. Are you sure you're well enough to practice? We wouldn't want you harming an important Federation asset because you were insane when you treated him."

"I am in my right mind."

"Then what the hell did you just hurt Sovaz like that for?"

"Very well." T'Laren definitely sounded angry, the distinctive degree of coldness in her voice differentiated from the coldness of mere annoyance. "I did not wish to deal with Sovaz. I did not want to answer her questions, I did not want to be faced with the reminders she presented, and the quickest and most logical fashion of silencing her would be to hurt her feelings. And I no longer wish to discuss the subject."

Tris was silent a moment. "You have really turned into a bitch, haven't you," he said incredulously.

"Apparently so. Now let me pass."

"No. No, I don't buy it. I can't believe that you, of all people, could turn that heartless. Cold, maybe, if you decided to go ultra-Vulcan. That I can buy. But cruel-- no. You'd just have told Sovaz you didn't want to talk about it, twenty times until it got through her head, but you wouldn't have cut her down like that."

"Perhaps you don't know me as well as you think you do."

"Perhaps I don't. But I think I know you well enough to know you usually pull this kind of stunt when you're feeling guilty. I remember when you tried to pull this crap on me, remember?"

"I never did that to you."

"You did so. I remember it quite distinctly. I wasn't going to take it then, and I'm not falling for it now. So what're you feeling guilty about?"

"You aren't going to do this to me, Tris. I know the trick. I am not your patient, and I am not about to tell you anything. You can believe anything you like about the incident, but I do not wish to discuss it with you or anyone."

There was a silence for a moment. "Fine," Tris said finally. "We'll talk about this later."

Q hastily moved away from the door, into the foyer of his own bedroom, and pretended to be unpacking as T'Laren came in. He glanced over at her, gauging her mood. She seemed very Vulcan and very withdrawn, and paid no attention to his ostentatious removal of his clothes from his bag, instead making a beeline for the bathroom. He shrugged, and started unpacking in earnest. T'Laren had asked him before why he bothered to bring clothes, when the replicators aboard Yamato could make anything he wanted. Having attempted to get clothes out of a Galaxy-class starship's replicator menu before, though, Q didn't trust Yamato's replicators to keep him in the style to which he'd grown accustomed, so he'd gotten an entire wardrobe out of Ketaya's replicators and lugged it over here. This, unfortunately, required that he unpack the whole thing, to avoid having to live out of his suitcase for two weeks. Vanity was a very taxing business.

While he worked, he spoke quietly to the computer. "Computer. Give me the definition of the word taran. Print it on the terminal screen."

"What language?"

"Probably Bajoran. If not, Vulcan."

A definition appeared on the terminal. "TARAN, fem. taransi. Bajoran. The male lover of a woman who is already married. No close Standard equivalent. Standard equivalent of fem. form is mistress." There was more, but Q ignored it. He'd suspected it would be something like that.

The door to the bathroom opened finally, and T'Laren came out. She walked over to the replicator and ordered a cup of Vulcan tea. Q bided his time until she was sitting down, sipping her tea. He stepped out of the bedroom.

"T'Laren. Why didn't you tell me you had such an interesting past?"

"You're incredibly predictable, Q," she murmured without glancing up.

"I never dreamed this conference would be so entertaining," he continued, ignoring T'Laren's comment. "You didn't even tell me you were married. Let alone that you were cheating on him."

That got her attention. "What makes you think I was cheating on my husband?" she asked sharply.

"Oh, come now, T'Laren. I'm not stupid."

"Lack of stupidity hardly means you cannot jump to the wrong conclusion."

"What other conclusion am I expected to draw, my dear doctor? When a young Bajoran man says that he is no longer your taran, it does tend to imply that he was at one point. Or are you going to tell me there's some subtlety to the word's translation that I missed? Perhaps in this context it means 'third cousin on the father's side', or something?" This was fun. He hadn't had this much fun in... in... come to think of it, he hadn't had this much fun since he lost his powers. T'Laren's expression was quite delightfully exasperated.

"You were eavesdropping."

"I prefer to think of it as lending a sympathetic ear."

T'Laren stared at him for several seconds in complete exasperated frustration, obviously struggling to find the correct words. "My past is none of your business," she said finally.

"Oh, really? I think it is my business. I seem to recall a little speech about how you were incapable of acting on a sexual temptation? About what a stalwart Vulcan you are and how faithful and ethical and all that? I can't quite see how that squares away with cheating on your husband. Seems like a very un-Vulcan thing to me. Now, I admit I'm no expert on Vulcan culture, but..."

"Why do you care?" she asked coldly. "Does the idea that I might have had a private life before I met you disturb you?"

"Not at all! You're far more interesting this way. My respect for you has just gone up enormously."

"Then I don't think I want your respect." She turned back to her tea.

Q walked over to her armchair and leaned over the top of it. "Oh, come now, T'Laren, don't be a wet blanket. I'm a trickster, remember? People who spend their entire lives within the confines of the socially acceptable bore me to tears. I knew you were more interesting than the typical Vulcan before, but now you're positively intriguing. And then, of course, there's that business with your sister." He perched on the armrest of her chair, leaning his arm along the top of it, hovering next to her. "You can't keep me in suspense. Tell me about it."

"No."

"No? She says no? A flat rejection. I'm crushed, T'Laren, truly I am." He stood up. "What's sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. I told you all the humiliating and sordid little stories you demanded of me."

"I am your psychologist. The relationship is not reciprocal."

"If you keep saying that, I'll start to think you don't love me."

She looked up at him. "You think this is extremely funny, don't you."

"Funny?... Oh, no, no, I wouldn't say 'funny'. Amusing, yes. Entertaining, certainly. But not exactly a knee-slapping, ripsnorting form of entertainment, no."

"You're an incredible hypocrite."

"A hypocrite? Moi?" That hurt a bit, actually, though he was damned if he'd show it. Q had spent most of his existence despising hypocrisy. "How am I a hypocrite?"

"Three days ago you were furious because you believed that humans laughed at your suffering. But you find other people's suffering extremely entertaining, don't you. You haven't truly changed at all; the only difference between you now and the omnipotent bully you used to be is that you're no longer omnipotent."

He smiled coldly. "Them's fightin' words, darlin'," he said. "In the mood for a three hour argument?"

T'Laren set down her tea on the table. "You have no other forms of entertainment available to you, do you? When you're not brutalizing others, or enjoying their pain, you're arguing with them. You can't be happy unless you're antagonizing someone somehow."

"Well." He picked up her tea and sipped at it, watching her reaction with amused eyes. "It's no secret that I like to argue."

Her eyes narrowed slightly. "It's also no secret that you are deliberately and grossly obnoxious."

Q set down the tea. "You get what you ask for."

T'Laren shook her head. "No. You returned kindness with thoughtlessness and cruelty. People may now treat you badly, but the cycle started with you."

"Did it now?"

"Yes."

"I wonder. You ever meet Dr. Taget, T'Laren?"

"No."

"He's a Tellarite. And a very typical one at that, obnoxious, argumentative, loud-mouthed--"

"You must have gotten along so well."

Q smiled thinly but didn't otherwise acknowledge the sortie. "I researched Dr. Taget a bit. At one point in his career, there had been death threats made. He'd managed to offend someone, I forget what it was, a Nausicaan or something like that. Something bigger than he was, hairier, and meaner. And because Dr. Taget was so well-respected, he was assigned a bodyguard while he was traveling on a Starfleet ship. This bodyguard was killed. Did Security turn on Dr. Taget? Brutalize him? Make him believe he would be killed? Did the captain of the ship he was on dismiss his complaints?"

"I take it the answer is 'no.'"

"You are so correct. The answer is a resounding 'no.' Actually, Dr. Taget, for all that he had nothing good to say about anyone else, had only glowing terms to speak of Starfleet security in. And this is not the only example I have." Q turned away. "Because I look human, and am expected to play by human rules, I have been systematically subjected to much greater indignities than any obvious alien. For that matter, I've been subjected to greater indignities than most humans. I've done a bit of research on the treatment of suicide attempts, for one thing, and nearly everything that should have been done after my second try wasn't. Whether Anderson was willing to admit it or not, her tactics smacked unpleasantly of trying to punish me for attempting to kill myself. Everything I've read indicates that that was exactly the wrong thing to do. If I had successfully done myself in this last time, it would have been the fault of Starbase 56's personnel as much as if not more than my own."

"You're trying to tell me that Starbase 56 drove you to suicide?"

Q was somewhat surprised by her skeptical tone-- wasn't that T'Laren's own theory? But then, she was probably playing devil's advocate. "Why did I change my mind so quickly after leaving the base?" he asked rhetorically. "Right at this moment, I feel so much better than I have since we defeated the Borg that I might almost be a different person. The only dramatic change in my life has been leaving Starbase 56. And considering that it was you who recommended the treatment, dear doctor, I would not argue against my point too vehemently if I were you."

"The climate on Starbase 56 was certainly an important factor. But I think you're trying to shift the blame off yourself onto them. You seem, in fact, to be trying to blame everything unpleasant that's happened since you lost your powers on either Starbase 56 personnel or humanity in general."

"Oh, I wouldn't say 'everything'. Most of what I've gone through has to do with rampant ingratitude and/or people who just won't let bygones be bygones, not necessarily humanity. Humanity, in fact, has been rather good about the bygones thing, although the gratitude part could use some work."

T'Laren raised an eyebrow. "Gratitude? For what?"

"For my services, of course. And for the knowledge that enabled the Federation to defeat a practically invincible enemy--"

"We have only your word for it that they were practically invincible."

"Then don't take my word for it. Ask the Melgaani. Oh, wait-- you can't, the Borg destroyed them. All right, ask one of the few remaining El-Aurians. You can find one aboard the Enterprise-- in fact, you and she are pals. Of course, you can't expect her to tell you anything, because her people don't believe in giving out information to such lowly short-lived creatures as yourselves, even when they call such creatures friends-- but I digress. You could go to the planet Tarvisti Seven, to the ruins of the Dream Domes, and open your mind to the psionic emanations. It might destroy you, but you'd get a very up close and personal look at just how invincible the Borg used to be." Q flung himself into a chair. "Besides, while that's the most important thing I've done for the Federation, it's hardly the only thing. In fact, if Starfleet weren't such complete hypocrites about the Prime Directive, they should by all rights have refused my offer of knowledge. Maximum warp is now 9.8, up from 9.6. I've deliberately avoided giving them transwarp, but that still means that the fastest Federation ships are faster than anything the Romulans or Cardassians or Tholians have. Defensive shields have increased in power by 60%. Weapons systems aren't particularly more powerful, except when fighting species with advanced multiphasic shields like the Borg, but there they're something like 600% times as efficient. Why do you think the Cardassians suddenly decided to give up worlds like Bajor? They can't afford to keep a military presence on a world so rife with terrorists when they have to play scramble to catch up to Federation tech. Which is why the Federation has free access to the Bajoran wormhole, something that would not have happened had the Cardassians still been holding the area. The Federation is in a much better strategic position vis-à-vis everybody than they were three years ago. And we haven't even mentioned the theoretical value of all the information I've given you people."

"All of which was rendered as payment for protection. Protecting you has cost the Federation 14 lives. Obviously, they consider the price to be worth it. But expecting gratitude into the bargain is a little much even for you."

"And what is this 'even for you' nonsense? When did you suddenly become a member of the Chorus for the Litany of Q's Crimes Against the Universe?"

"I have always been aware of your flaws. It is important to make sure you know them and are working to overcome them, or all the social polish in the universe will not help you."

"That's a terribly naive attitude. Villains who smile are better-loved than the good-hearted but socially inept. If I had all the social polish in the universe, I could be a monstrosity and I'd still get people to like me."

"My conscience would be eased tremendously if I will be able to look back on my work with you and conclude that you did not end up a monstrosity."

"So be more precise, T'Laren. Are you saying that I am a monstrosity, or that you're afraid I'll become one?"

"What would you call someone who is entertained by the pain of others?"

Q smiled coolly. "A normal human being." He leaned forward. "Don't take that self-righteous attitude with me. You pretend you know something about human nature, so either you're deceiving yourself or you're an enormous hypocrite. Are you going to deny to me that human beings enjoy scandal? That the unveiling of others' mysterious pasts excites them? That they might find the notion that a person who had presented herself as above temptation turns out to be just as much mortal clay as they are, if not more so, intriguing? Any human would have the same reaction to this whole business with your sister and the Bajoran fellow. I'm just honest enough to admit it."

"And tactless enough?"

"Oh, they're the same thing. Can't have honesty and tact at the same time."

"But you typically display neither trait."

"I have been brutally honest with you, T'Laren. I've told you things I've told no other being alive. I've never once lied to you."

"Perhaps. But you have a reputation for being... somewhat cavalier with your concept of truth."

"There's no such thing as absolute truth. Only beings as ignorant as you mortals could even devise the concept. There are as many truths on any given topic as there are beings who know of that topic. Since I'm no longer near-omniscient, of course, I'm limited to my own version of a given truth, but I don't make the mistake of believing that truth is absolute."

"You might try to be a little more objective--"

"Objective? That's another mortal concept. How can you possibly be objective? The act of observation changes that which is observed. No one sits outside the universe and watches from on high, not even the Q. And besides, each individual brings so many biases to his perceptions that nothing of any significance can be perceived in any fashion remotely close to objectively. You Vulcans are positively ridiculous in your belief that you can overcome your biases and view the universe objectively. Through the filter of logic, and you claim that's objectivity! Logic's just another bias!"

"We are not discussing Vulcans, Q. We're discussing you."

It figured. Get into an interesting philosophical argument-- especially one where his experience gave him the high ground-- and she would try to drag the conversation back around to his shortcomings. Q refused to let his good mood be sullied by her obstinacy. "No no no, we're discussing Vulcans. In particular, a single individual Vulcan who claims to be objective, who believes she can transcend her own emotional biases when she wants to, and yet who gets on a moral high horse about something that everyone does and is perfectly normal just because she's uncomfortable with it. What are you complaining about, T'Laren? That I am an evil nasty person who delights in the pain of others, or that you are embarrassed to have so much of your sordid past revealed?"

"You know nothing of my past."

"Admittedly you haven't been exactly forthcoming on the topic. So I've had to take what little I can get."

"Q, I have a right to privacy. My life is not a soap opera for your amusement."

"But don't I have the right to know the person I'm dealing with?"

"If it were--"

The door chime interrupted. "Enter!" Q caroled gleefully, hoping a visitor might spice things up still more.

He was not disappointed. Sovaz stood in the doorway, hands clasped in front of her at her waist. "Q?"

"Come on in! Make yourself at home. My apartment is your apartment. What can I do for you, dear girl?"

Sovaz entered, but not very far. "I have my own apartment," she said politely. "I see no need to share yours, but thank you for the offer."

Q turned to T'Laren. "Did you ever think about teaching a course in human idioms at the Vulcan Science Academy or something?"

T'Laren had gone completely stone-faced again. "No."

"Well, someone should." He turned back to Sovaz. "It's an expression, Lieutenant. It means you should relax and make use of whatever I own for the sake of your personal comfort. And please don't tell me that Vulcans are incapable of being comfortable or something silly like that."

"I am quite comfortable," Sovaz said, "except of course for the fact that human-normal environments are always cold and damp, but I'm used to that. Is this expression a social amenity?"

"Did you ever meet an android named Data?"

"Once. When I was posted to the Feynman three years ago, we shared scientific data with the Enterprise, and I had an opportunity to speak to Commander Data. I asked him a great many questions, and he answered all of them. I was quite pleased; most people don't try to answer all my questions. Why do you ask?"

"Because you sound like him."

Sovaz thought about it. "I think perhaps it's a resemblance that's only obvious to humans. I can't detect it."

"Ah. So, what brings you here?" He was peripherally aware of T'Laren standing utterly still, as if she could negate her own presence by being unmoving. Sooner or later Q had to find out what was going on between these two.

"I have come to invite you to a reception tonight for conference guests at 1900 hours. You may, of course, bring members of your entourage." Her voice was formal and precise, and she carefully not-looked at T'Laren with a visible effort. Q grinned.

"Well. Let me ask my entourage." He turned to T'Laren. "Entourage, how does a reception at 1900 sound?"

"If you wish to attend, I will of course go with you."

"I love Vulcan precision. Not a hint about how you might feel about the concept. Ah well, if you have no feelings you can't get upset if I run roughshod over them, can you?" He turned back to Sovaz. "Sounds marvelous. Formal attire?"

"Yes."

"Wonderful. This gets better and better. And you'll be there?"

"I'm Yamato's science department's liaison to the conference. I must attend."

"Well, if you go into it with that attitude, you won't have any fun at all." Q walked over to where Sovaz stood near the door and leaned on the wall behind her, hovering over her. "I'll tell you what. If you'll promise not to be a complete stuffy Vulcan, I'll promise not to make everyone else at the reception's life a living hell. Sound good to you?"

"I am a Vulcan," Sovaz said, sounding confused, "so I can't oblige you on that part. In this context, what do the adjectives 'complete' and 'stuffy' mean?"

Q pointed at T'Laren. "See her?"

For the first time, Sovaz looked at T'Laren. "Yes."

"That is a complete stuffy Vulcan. Note the frigid posture, the stony face, the total lack of animation. Sad, really, since T'Laren's usually a much more interesting person, but apparently she decided that being interesting was hideously embarrassing. Now, would you rather be interesting, or would you rather look like that?"

"I'd rather be interesting," Sovaz said definitely. "If I promise not to be a complete stuffy Vulcan, will you answer all my questions?"

"All your questions? Frankly, that depends on how many you have and how much detail you need on them. I get paid for this, you know. But I'm sure I could see fit to toss a few freebies your way."

"Is a freebie a kind of frisbee?"

Q stared. "'Frisbee?'"

"A kind of toy that humans use to practice throwing skills, vector calculation and social cooperation. My sis-- T'Laren taught me how to use a frisbee once. It was very educational. But I had somewhat more abstract questions in mind, actually. I already understand the physics of frisbees fairly well."

"No. A freebie is a free gift. Gratis. Without charge." He turned to T'Laren with a huge grin. "Frisbees? My dear doctor. You have been corrupting this child, haven't you."

"No, she hasn't," Sovaz said, sounding slightly defensive. "Frisbees are very useful for helping children learn how to--"

"It was a facetious comment, Lieutenant. A joke, in other words. You aren't supposed to take it seriously." He sighed. "What do they teach them these days?"

Sovaz apparently figured out that that was a rhetorical question. "I need to deliver other invitations. But you will be there?"

"I wouldn't miss it."

She nodded, and left.

T'Laren expected and feared that the argument would continue after Sovaz left. Instead Q went into his bedroom and occupied himself with removing various articles of clothing that he'd just packed, trying them on, and staring at himself in the mirror as if his appearance were a painting he was thinking of revising heavily. She retreated to her own room, requested the computer to shut the door-- individual rooms in the suite apparently didn't shut their doors automatically-- and unpacked the few items she had bothered to bring aboard.

The door to the bedroom opened. Q stood there in a black jumpsuit with glittering gold piping and a short gold jacket. "What do you think?"

"What do I think of what?"

"Of the outfit, of course."

"I think it's a bit flamboyant, actually."

"Flamboyant? Flamboyant?" Q shook his head rapidly. "No no no. What a deprived young woman. Do you want to see flamboyant?" He departed and returned a moment later with a medieval Renaissance costume held up to him. "This is flamboyant."

She was certainly not going to contradict him. "Why do you have that... outfit... with you at all?" T'Laren asked, trying not to sound overwhelmed with incredulity.

"Well, in case I felt like wearing it, of course. Why do you think?" He put the costume down and glared at her. "Are you going to wear that?"

T'Laren was dressed in a formal gray shipsuit with darker gray quilted shoulders and some black edging. It had served perfectly well for coming aboard the Yamato, and she couldn't see why it wouldn't serve for the formal reception. "Yes."

Q rolled his eyes. "Fate spare me from the fashion-illiterate." He shook his head. "You can't wear that. Please tell me you're just trying to get back at me and you actually had no intention of wearing that."

"I really don't see what's wrong with it."

"It's boring! It's dull, it's stuffy, it's hideous, it turns your skin gray and it makes you look at least fifty years older. Would you wear something with a little color in it, at least, so I needn't die from mortification that I'm associated with you?"

"It is perfectly acceptable," T'Laren said, with just a touch more sharpness than she'd intended. "I hardly see the need to take fashion advice from a man who's been known to dress as a 22nd-century starship captain, a 16th-century fop-- and a 21st-century judge."

"Oh, you're going to blame me for the judge? Blame humanity; I didn't come up with the costume."

"But you dressed in it."

"To make a point."

"What sort of point did you intend to make by dressing as a Starfleet captain from two hundred years ago?"

"I was protesting that they wouldn't let me wear a Starfleet uniform. Besides, I freely admit those things were flamboyant and silly. They were always intended to be. But this-- this is just a disaster, T'Laren. It makes you look like-- like--" He paused, as if at a loss for words, and finally sputtered, "like a Vulcan!"

"I am a Vulcan."

"That's no excuse. Look." He strode into her room and walked over to the clothing replicator. "Menu."

"Q--"

"This one looks nice," he said, scrutinizing the menu. "And this isn't half bad. And the green in this one would go marvelously with your bloodshot eyes--"

"Q!" T'Laren walked over to him. "I have no intention of changing my outfit to please your outrageous sensibilities. Will you get away from my replicator, or will I be forced to bodily remove you?"

He wagged his finger at her. "Touchy, touchy, touchy. And here I thought I couldn't offend you."

"I was wrong."

"You certainly were. That shade of gray was never meant to be worn by a humanoid-- except perhaps a Cardassian, but then they hardly count as humanoid, do they." He turned back to the replicator. "A 401A, in my friend's size."

"It doesn't have my size. I haven't stepped into the measuring unit."

"Ah, but this, my dear, is a Galaxy-class starship. Not one of those little bathtub tugs you're accustomed to serving on." The replicator produced an outfit. Q removed it with a flourish and unrolled it in front of her. "Voila!"

Despite herself, T'Laren was forced to admit that the shipsuit Q was presenting her with was, in fact, better-looking. Her current attire was conservative and sedate; this was professional, sharp, attractive without the excessive flashiness she'd have expected from something Q would pick out. It was in gray and dark green, not much more colorful than what she wore, but she could tell that it would, in fact, flatter her coloring much better.

She studied Q for a moment, trying to decide whether this was a power game or a particularly obnoxious way of making a peace offering. "It's quite attractive," she finally said.

"So you agree with me! Go on, try it on. I'll go in the other room and cover my eyes."

"No." She took the shipsuit from him and hung it up in her closet. "I will wear what I'm wearing." She turned to face him. "I'm not your dress-up doll, Q."

"No, of course not. But I had thought we were friends."

After your performance today? I wouldn't wish to see the way you treat your enemies. "Perhaps we are," she offered evenly.

"Well, as a concerned friend, it would ill behoove me to let you go out like that. Friends don't let friends dress like Vulcan schoolmarms."

"Vulcan schoolmarms wear dark brown robes. And I don't think you intend a gesture of friendship, Q, not after your behavior today."

"What, because I argue with someone means I can't be their friend?"

"When you repeatedly bring up points that obviously cause another person pain, refusing to back off when you're asked, and make light of an evidently traumatic situation, it is hard to imagine why the other person would want to call you friend." She turned away quite deliberately and crossed the room, turning back only when she had placed the bed between them.

"Ah." Q's expression had gone very masklike. For a moment she regretted the harsh words-- but he had to learn. "In that case, I'll leave you to your no doubt vital activities, Doctor." He turned and pivoted back through the door into the suite, which swooshed shut behind him.

Either he was giving a remarkably good show of wounded pride, or she had actually hurt his feelings. Could it be that after all this time, he still didn't realize that being obnoxious was not a good way to reach out to people? That if he wished to be another person's friend, he should refrain from harassing them? Had this been Q's idea of a peace offering? If that was the case, she really had a lot further to go with him than she'd thought back on Ketaya-- unless he'd backslid. That could have happened, too.

The trouble was that she had no objectivity right now. She remembered telling Anderson that Q couldn't offend her unless she allowed it... but she hadn't thought she might be faced with Sovaz. Fate was capable of cruel jokes. Or perhaps Lhoviri had arranged this? Sovaz's presence could be explained by Lhoviri's sick sense of humor. Or by her own carelessness. She should have checked the crew listings. But then, who could have expected this? To have both Sovaz and Tris on the same ship, and then to have T'Laren come to that ship unaware-- that had to be someone's idea of a joke.

She had barely managed to maintain control. The moment she'd seen Sovaz, all her carefully constructed barriers against her own memories had begun to crash, and she remembered the last time she'd seen Sovaz--

She pressed her hands to her temples, trying to shut out the vision of Sovaz's shattered innocence. It hadn't happened. Sovaz didn't remember how her older sister had betrayed her, destroyed her, because it hadn't happened.

...never have happened...

But it had. She remembered it if no one else could. She remembered how Sovaz had looked, and the awful feeling of desolation that had overwhelmed her when she saw the girl's expression, worse even than the horror of realizing what she'd done to Soram. And she couldn't stop remembering. How was she supposed to face Sovaz, knowing what she'd done to the girl?

How was she supposed to face Sovaz after the cruel way she'd rejected the girl today?

It hadn't happened.

"Lhoviri," she whispered. "I can't do this." She sat down heavily. "You're supposed to be omnipotent," she told the air quietly. "You could have fixed me better than this, surely."

She had no idea whether the reply came from Lhoviri or her own mind. But whoever had said it, they were right. This incident has destroyed my objectivity. I should be concentrating on helping Q, not wallowing in my own pain. That's what Lhoviri is paying for, anyway. That is why it didn't happen.

Physician, heal thyself. T'Laren stared at the outfit Q had given her, replaying the scene with Q in her mind and analyzing it. He had expressed interest, amusement, even glee at the situation with Tris, Sovaz and herself. He had mocked her for her relationship with Tris-- but he was right on one level. She had told Q she was not attracted to him, nor would she pursue him if she was, and that much was true. But she had also told him she was capable of resisting temptation, and that she had no desire to have sex with a man she couldn't meld with-- and that was demonstrably false. T'Laren remembered the humans she'd picked up in seedy bars on out-of-the-way starbases or planetary shore leave, desperately trying to convince herself that if she didn't meld with them she wasn't betraying Soram. She remembered Tris, and how close she had come to divorcing Soram for him. And while she was torturing herself, why didn't she go ahead and remember Melor? How many people had she betrayed by going to bed with him, and in how many different ways?

No. This was counterproductive. Q had hurt her because, on this topic, she felt a great deal of guilt and could easily be hurt. It was Q's nature to probe for weaknesses-- he could hardly be blamed for that at this stage of his development. If she had truly thought for a moment that she had made great strides with him, she was a fool. She knew better-- psychological treatment involved no miracle cures. Q trusted her and would probably not be a complete ass to her in the absence of other social stimuli, most of the time. Give him other people to interact with, however, and he would... be himself. And if that hurt her, that was her failing for allowing it.

So. Q had been amused by the fact that she'd turned out to be fallible. This was understandable. He had tried to charm Sovaz at T'Laren's expense. Given how T'Laren had behaved toward Sovaz, however, he wasn't even entirely wrong to do that. He had found the whole situation with her past coming back to haunt her entertaining-- but he was right; it was a natural human reaction and it was only because Q was completely tactless and allowed his amusement to show so blatantly that it had been so hurtful. Which meant... he was being an ass, but probably not maliciously so. And so the offer of the suit might not have been the opening move of a power game. It might have been a peace offering.

But this brought her back to the beginning, because she still couldn't tell which. So she considered consequences. If she rejected a peace offering, Q would be hurt-- and he had seemed to be hurt; surely it couldn't have entirely been her comment about friends that elicited that reaction-- unless it had been faked? But why would he fake being hurt? Q might ostentatiously play at being wounded, but he always made it obvious that it was play, a defense against the notion that she might actually hurt him. There was nothing for him to gain by a sincere pretense at pain. And Q would not be hurt if she rejected a power gambit. He would shrug, smile and try again. If he backed off, he'd do so in such a fashion to imply that he was conceding temporarily, or the game no longer amused him-- not that he'd gotten hurt.

T'Laren picked up the outfit. It was better-looking, and Q's obsession with clothing was quite genuine. He could mock or parody his own obsessions-- as witness the Renaissance outfit-- but they were no less real. Q might really have considered the question of her attire to be important, and have been trying, in his typical obnoxious fashion, to save her from what he perceived to be an embarrassment. It seemed likely that she had assumed it was a power gambit simply because she was annoyed at him, and because she considered clothing a trivial issue.

Ten minutes later she went to the door of Q's room and pushed the door chime.

The door swished open. "Fancy meeting you here," Q said, and then his eyes fell on the outfit. "Aha. I see you had a sudden attack of fashion sense."

"I decided I would take your word for it," she said. "One as obsessed with clothing as you can hardly help but have a better sense for such things."

He nodded approvingly. "It's quite attractive, if I do say so myself. You could still do something with your hair, but then I'm not about to push my luck."

"A wise decision." As T'Laren stepped further into the room, Q's own appearance registered on her. Her eyebrows went up. He had changed clothing again, this time choosing a suit in dark red and grey that was far less flamboyant than the previous black and gold. He had also done something to his hair-- made it less obvious how little of it there was, and gotten the gray in it to concentrate at the temples instead of being scattered throughout. The most startling change, however, was that he seemed to have gained back all the weight he'd lost over the past three years. Q had never been built bulkily, but when he'd been omnipotent his mass had been enough, combined with his height, to make him formidable-looking. Over the past three years, in the holos she'd seen of him, he'd grown more and more gaunt, and less and less impressive-looking, until finally he'd wound up in sickbay looking like a matchstick. He had always been able to lessen the gauntness with clothing somewhat; now, though, he seemed to have actually gotten rid of it. Only his hands betrayed him.

He noticed her stare. "Impressive, isn't it? It's taken me close to an hour just to get to this point, and I still haven't put makeup on yet." Q turned to the mirror, where he had ranged a large number of cosmetics. "You can watch if you want, it won't bother me."

"It is impressive. It must be uncomfortable, though."

"Oh, astonishingly. I can't sit down." He took what looked like a surgical scanner and ran it over his face, leaning against the mirror. "Beauty is pain." This was intoned with such solemnity that she knew he would have to turn around and grin at her. He did so, satisfying her faith in her ability to predict Q.

"Why do you do it, then?" she asked. "I would think you would consider physical appearance to be completely superficial."

"Absolutely. By definition, even. Couldn't agree more."

"So why--"

"Because, except for Vulcans-- and you people are extremely weird; I don't think you have any idea how much of an aberration Vulcans are-- nearly all species on this evolutionary level judge others by appearances. And humans are among the worst of the bunch." He turned to face her. "When I was on Starbase 56, it was in a sense my territory. People came there to see me. I was by definition the center of attention, the most important person there, whatever you want to call it, so it hardly mattered what I looked like, people were going to respect me and listen to me anyway-- at least to the extent that they ever did. Not to mention I was utterly miserable, and so it seemed appropriate that I look the part." Q turned back to the mirror, using several specialized tools to apply cosmetics to the top half of his face. He seemed to be flattening wrinkles and then recoloring the skin. "Now, though, I am no longer on my own territory. If I want to receive the sort of respect I've grown accustomed to, I need to use every tool at my disposal-- which includes making my physical appearance as impressive as possible."

T'Laren nodded slowly. "That's very interesting."

"I detect the drawing of a dissection scalpel. What's very interesting?"

"You recognize the necessity of using superficial appearance to manipulate others. But it doesn't seem to have occurred to you to develop the same sort of techniques to improve your social appearance."

"Oh, don't. Puh-lease." He glanced over at her. His face seemed not to fit together properly-- the top half was evenly colored and largely unlined, the forehead and eyes of a man in the prime of his life. The lower, unfinished half, however, was even more pale and drawn than usual in comparison, and the effect was that of a man with a very lifelike mask over one half of his face. Which half was the mask, though, was indeterminate, since he'd already brought his hair and body in line with the lies his upper face told. "Believe it or not, T'Laren, I am capable of being socially competent when I want to be. I have even on occasion been called charming. I realize this must be a shock to you."

"You can't sustain it. And you seem to have very little desire to do it as a general rule."

"You're right, but then I don't usually go around in such an elaborate costuming job that I can barely move, either."

"You do realize that you are not going to be the constant center of attention. The conference attendees all have more or less equal status. If you came here expecting they would hang on your every word, I'm afraid you'll be disappointed."

"Oh, I don't need to be the constant center of attention." He turned and grinned at her. "Merely semi-constant."

"Even that much might be too much to hope for."

"It's not, I assure you. I can easily ensure that people pay attention to me. I can even do it without being excessively annoying." His grin broadened. "Shocking, but true."

T'Laren raised an eyebrow. "You seem to be in an unusually good mood today."

"Oh, I am."

"Do you have any idea why?"

Q lost the smile. "Let's not dissect my mood until it's dead, shall we?"

"As you wish."

He stepped back from the mirror, examining himself. The makeup job seemed complete to T'Laren, but Q was apparently unsatisfied, leaning back in to do minor touch-ups that seemed not to produce any appreciable change. "How does it look?"

"Very thorough. One would never imagine you spent two weeks on life support a mere month ago."

"No, one wouldn't, would one?" He turned to her. "Is it necessary to say you're my psychologist? I realize you've already blown it in front of the crew, but then I don't really care what Commander Clean-Cut and his band of merry men think of me."

"There's no stigma attached to having a personal therapist, Q."

"So say personal therapist. Not psychologist. Not psychiatrist, either, which is actually what you said you were."

"Did I?" She thought back. He was right. "I'm sorry. I was-- distraught. It was an inaccurate description, since I'm not in fact a psychiatrist, and it was unnecessary even had it been true."

"For once I won't argue with you."

The door to the suite chimed. T'Laren started toward the door. "It's most likely Sovaz," Q pointed out. As she held back, he stepped ahead of her and went to the door. "Come in!"

It was, in fact, Sovaz. T'Laren noted that the girl's hair had gotten overlong again. Sovaz tried to keep her hair in a bowl cut, for the eminently logical reason that she didn't want to fuss with it, but she was constantly forgetting to get her hair cut. Her straight bangs were starting to flop into her eyes. She almost opened her mouth to say, "Sovakam, you need a haircut," out of habit, but her mind caught up with her in time.

"Will you need an escort to Ten-Forward?" Sovaz asked.

"Ten-Forward?" Q hesitated. "Right. This is a Galaxy-class starship, isn't it. You frightened me there for a moment."

"Why would you be frightened of the presence of Ten-Forward?"

"An old... acquaintance of mine runs the Ten-Forward lounge on the Enterprise. Someone who I would much prefer never to see again in my life. And certainly, if you want to escort me, by all means do. I've never had to find my way from VIP quarters to the Ten-Forward lounge on a Galaxy-class starship before." He turned to T'Laren. "Come along, entourage."

As they headed for Ten-Forward, Sovaz began talking. "The conference doesn't officially start until tomorrow at 1500 hours. Nearly everyone is here; the only exceptions are Professor Yalit and Dr. Pergiun. Have you ever met either of them?"

"Pergiun I've met. He's a pompous ass. Yalit I've never even heard of."

"There's widespread speculation as to her race. Since she hasn't been seen in person in sixty years, all anyone has to go on is records from her time at the Makropyrios. She bears some physical resemblance to Ferengi, but of course Ferengi females are forbidden by law from leaving the Ferengi homeworld, except to go to a colony world, of course, which in any case the Makropyrios is not. I believe they're also forbidden from learning to read, or any other form of higher education. I had a fascinating discussion with a Ferengi, in which he was trying to explain to me the reasons why his species organizes their gender roles in such fashion. I thought it was a highly illogical system, myself. He wanted information on Vulcan mating habits in exchange, in particular my personal experiences, and I had to tell him I had no personal experience in that particular area. I believe he thought I cheated him. This is considered a grave offense among the Ferengi. I find this hard to reconcile with the fact that they are well-known for cheating other species, but he assured me that this was not so."

"Lieutenant?"

"Yes?"

"I really don't care about the Ferengi."

"Oh. If I am discussing a topic of little interest to you, feel free to tell me to be quiet. Everyone else does."

"I'll keep that in mind," Q said. They reached Ten-Forward, not a moment too soon in T'Laren's opinion. "Oh, and Lieutenant?"

"Yes?"

Q shook his head gravely. "Do something with your hair."

As they entered Ten-Forward, Sovaz left them, running off to nursemaid another set of VIPs. T'Laren wondered whose brilliant idea it was to put the girl in charge of liaison duties-- it was not always a good idea to leave Sovaz in charge of fastening her own uniform properly, let alone playing diplomat to an entire conference full of undoubtedly pompous and arrogant people. For just a moment, T'Laren wished for her Starfleet rank back-- counselors from other ships in the fleet had a great deal more business asking a commanding officer why he was placing a subordinate in a completely inappropriate position than civilian psychologists had. But she pushed the thought away-- it was not her place to worry about Sovaz anymore. Obviously Sovaz had learned to take care of herself-- she had been promoted, hadn't she? She no longer needed an older sister to watch over her-- and if she did, she was in trouble, because she didn't have one anymore. T'Laren hadn't the time to worry about anyone but Q.

The object of her worries was standing a few feet in from the door, peering about through the multi-species gathering as if trying to decide who it would be most entertaining to inflict his presence on first. The decision was taken out of his hands, however, by a voice from the left. "I know you, don't I?"

T'Laren turned. For a second, she didn't recognize the man; she wasn't expecting to see anyone else she knew, and if she had been, she'd have expected to see someone from her past, before Q. She certainly didn't expect to see someone from Starbase 56. So it took a second or two to realize that she knew the lieutenant in a blue dress uniform, and another second to recognize him as Harry Roth.

"You could be right," Q said. "You look vaguely familiar. It's entirely possible that we've met."

"I'm sure of it," Roth said firmly. "I'd never forget a face like yours. I just can't place your name."

"It's such a difficult name to remember," Q murmured. He put on a show of thinking about it. "No, I can't remember your name either. I'm drawing a complete blank."

"Don't you hate when that happens?"

T'Laren watched with some bemusement. She had never seen the two of them interacting; she had only Roth's word for it that they had any better a relationship than Q'd had with anyone on Starbase 56, and Q himself had seemed to contradict Roth. This, however, seemed like the kind of banter one would see between actual friends. "Tremendously," Q said. "It ruins my entire week." He frowned. "Perhaps if I knew where you were last stationed, that might provide a clue."

"Hmm... I was last stationed on... that's right, it was Starbase 56."

"Well, now! I've spent the past three years on Starbase 56."

"So have I! What a coincidence! You think that's where we met?"

"It seems likely." Q pretended to think again. "I'm sure I could remember. It's just that your face is so nondescript. Perhaps another clue...?"

Behind T'Laren, Tris's voice murmured, "These two know each other, I take it?"

"Rather well, I think," she murmured back.

"Exactly how well is rather well?"

Remembering Tris, and the way his mind worked, it was obvious what he meant. "Not that well, I believe."

Roth snapped his fingers. "No, I remember you now! You're K, aren't you?"

"One down, twenty-five to go," Q said. "You're seeming a bit more familiar yourself-- is it... Harold Godfrey?"

Roth shuddered dramatically. "Not even in jest, Q," he said. T'Laren presumed Harold Godfrey was a private joke of some sort.

Q smiled broadly. "Oh, Harry!" He grabbed Roth's shoulder and hugged him in a parody of friendliness. "How've you been?"

T'Laren raised an eyebrow. Q released Roth before the other man made any attempt to get free. "Can't complain," Roth said. "And you? You look much better."

"I'd better. Considering what I looked like the last time you saw me." Q jerked a thumb at T'Laren. "This creature's been making me exercise."

"Is that true?" Roth demanded, wide-eyed. "Have you actually forced this poor being to engage in strenuous physical activity?"

"Vulcans cannot lie," T'Laren said, deadpan. "I admit it."

"How shocking! How astounding! I salute you, dear lady-- you've done the impossible." Roth turned to Tris. "This is the most astonishing Vulcan I've met, did you know?"

"We've met before," Tris said calmly. "T'Laren's got a number of astonishing talents."

There was no way Roth, of all people, would miss that one. T'Laren resisted the temptation to glare at Tris, and kept her face impassive as Roth raised both eyebrows. "Is that so?"

"Are you having fun without me, Harry?" a woman asked. "It's against Starfleet regs."

The newcomer was an apparently human woman, a lieutenant commander in blue with dusky skin and long black hair. "Commander Dhawan, what a delight!" Roth said. "Q, T'Laren, this is Shahrazad Dhawan, chief science officer on this lovely ship. Commander, this is Q--"

"We've met," Dhawan said flatly. T'Laren gathered the distinct impression that if she'd realized Roth was talking to Q, she wouldn't have come over.

"Have we?" Q asked. "I can't say I remember... though, of course, I've met so many petty little science people."

Before Dhawan could react, Roth charged in. "And this is Dr. T'Laren, his psychologist. Dr. T'Laren is the most astonishing Vulcan, Commander. Not only does she tell jokes, but she actually managed to get Q to exercise." He glanced at Q slyly. "I'll be polite and keep from speculating on what sort of exercise program, exactly."

Q smiled cheerily. "Good for you. Because if you did, I'd have to say something vicious and scathing, and we'd all prefer to remain civilized at a gathering of the Federation's finest minds. Which reminds me, Harry, what are you doing here?"

Roth laughed. "Still with the same wit and charm as ever, I see," he said. "Believe it or not, I am in fact one of the Federation's finest minds."

With a tragically horrified expression, Q said, "I had no idea things had gotten so bad."

"Oh, ha," Roth said. "Truly, think about it." He spoke as if reciting to a concert hall. "Bright Jove, radiant as a thousand moons, pales next to the blaze of the sun."

"Oh, nicely said."

In a voice pitched for Vulcan ears only, Tris said, "Correct me if I'm wrong, but are those two flirting, or what?"

"Or what passes for it," T'Laren murmured back.

"After all, consider who I had for a teacher," Roth was saying.

"You have a point." Q turned to the other three. "I taught Harry everything he knows."

"It's true," Roth nodded. He glanced sideways at Q. "Now, if only he would let me teach him everything I know..."

"Can I break up this mutual admiration society here?" Dhawan asked, at exactly the wrong point-- T'Laren would have loved to see how Q would respond to such a blatantly flirtatious overture.

"I don't see why," Q said. "I'm having fun."

"You can stand here and trade double entendres with Harry all night for all I care. But the captain would like to meet you at some point."

"Oh, the mysterious Captain Okita finally deigns to grace me with his presence?"

"Now, Q, let's try not to be a complete ass, shall we?" Roth said. "Though admittedly you do it so well."

Q shrugged. "When one has a talent as well-developed as mine, it seems a shame to waste it."

"Use it on someone other than Commander Dhawan, then. She's been known to pull knives on Klingons."

"Really." Q turned to Dhawan. "Should I be frightened?"

Dhawan smiled ferally. "You're not a Klingon." She let a beat pass. "I wouldn't waste a knife on you."

"I think a good kick in the butt would do the job, myself," Tris said. "If you think it's necessary, Shara, I hereby volunteer."

"You think I can't fight my own battles, Tris?" Dhawan asked cheerfully.

"Hardly. I think Derek would have a fit if a human officer attacked one of the guests, though. Whereas I'm a crazy Bajoran, so I can get away with it. Besides, it's always best to pick on someone your own size."

T'Laren blinked. That had to be another Tris-ism. "Tris, what does size have to do with it? Commander Dhawan is much smaller than Q."

From Tris's expression, she realized she had just played straight woman for him again. "Exactly. It'd be a terribly unfair fight. Everyone knows a short vicious woman can kick a tall man's butt from here to Romulus, and if he tries to defend himself physically everyone jumps on him for hitting a small woman. Whereas I can kick Q's butt from here to Romulus, and no one would criticize him for trying to fight back." He beamed at Q. "See, this is Starfleet. It's very important for us to fight fair."

"Are you both truly complete psychopathic savages, or is this an act you're putting on for my benefit?" Q asked.

"In Tris's case it's an act," T'Laren said. "He may consider a beating to be highly therapeutic for you, but he won't actually administer one without a prescription. I would watch Commander Dhawan if I were you, however. She seems formidable."

"Thank you," Dhawan said. She turned to Q. "I don't want you on my ship."

"The very soul of diplomacy. I can see why they got a Vulcan child to do your job."

"I don't believe in beating around the bush. I don't want any of you on my ship. I'm perfectly capable of analyzing the singularity myself, and I don't need every physicist in the Federation second-guessing me. And I consider you personally to be highly overrated."

"Really."

"Yes, really. If you're so brilliant, if you're bending over backwards to help out us mere mortals, why are we still limited to warp? Why haven't you given us the secret of teleportation, or something?"

"Because," Q said, as if talking to a very small child, "the way I know how to teleport is to travel to the Q Continuum, then back out to the mundane universe. And I really don't think that sending a pack of teleporting savages to go romping through my old hometown will endear me any to the folks sitting on my parole board. Not to mention that you'd consume the power of an entire sun every time you did it, and the stress of channeling such energy would derange your petty little minds. Does the name Gary Mitchell ring a bell?"

It didn't, actually. It didn't seem to enlighten Dhawan, either. "It was an example, Q. Surely a superior being like yourself can think of something we mere mortals are capable of."

"Certainly. But being capable of something and being ready to do it are two entirely different things. As I understand it, human children are capable of reproducing themselves when they're twelve. No one suggests it would be a good idea for them to do so, however. If I gave you a dramatic advance in theoretical understanding, enough to support something like, oh, say, a working transwarp drive, it would disrupt the balance of power in your little area of the galaxy. I trust the Federation more than the Romulans or Cardassians; I do not, however, trust them with dramatic increases of power. And I find it very interesting that you, a member of an organization whose Prime Directive is not to contaminate less advanced cultures with technology they're not ready for, should think less of a member of a more advanced culture for holding back what he knows."

"He's got you, Shara," Tris said. "Of course, I always thought the Prime Directive was arrogant and patronizing, myself."

"No problem," Roth said. "Q will cheerily admit to being arrogant and patronizing, I'm sure."

T'Laren raised an eyebrow. "Harry, if this is how you treat people you like, I'd hate to see your behavior toward one you hated."

"I never said I liked Q, Doctor. I said I could tolerate him."

"You love me, Harry. Admit it. You were the secret admirer sending the boxes of chocolate to my room."

"Couldn't have been. Maybe that was Nian, trying to cheer you up. I send my secret admirees things like black silk briefs." Roth paused a second, as if thinking. "You suppose it could have been Amy?"

Q grimaced. "Oh, please."

A man in an antigrav-chair floated up behind Q. He was a stick figure, skin and bones, limply lolling in the chair; his head was connected to the chair by implants at his temples, which touched against two bars coming out from the chair. The contraption seemed to be all that was holding his head in place. "I see you're still winning friends and influencing people," his chair said in the same kind of slightly flat voice the subvocalizer Q had used during his hospitalization produced. It would have sounded normal at first if T'Laren hadn't known it to be coming from a chair.

Q turned. "Daedalus!" he exclaimed. "What a delight! Though I must admit it doesn't come as a surprise-- I saw your name on the guest list."

"I saw yours as well," the chair said for the man in it. "I don't know why I didn't cancel then."

"Because you knew this conference would be condemned to utter dullness without me, and you wished to provide me moral support in my ambition to liven it up."

"I suppose that must have been it." The man's head turned slightly, eyes focusing on Q. In contrast to the debilitated state of the rest of him, his eyes were shockingly bright. "You look terrible, you know that?"

"I'm wounded. I spent three hours in front of a mirror trying to control the damage and you see through me immediately."

"I always saw through you, Lucy. It's the curse of being the greatest mind humanity currently has."

"Who is this, Q?" T'Laren asked.

Dhawan and Roth looked at her as if she had confessed she really hadn't known that stars weren't painted on the sky. "The estimable Dr. Peter Markow, intrepid explorer into regions where no man has gone before and angels fear to tread," Q said. He pronounced the name Markov; T'Laren remembered the spelling from the conference guest list. "And Daedalus, this is my charming Vulcan companion, T'Ex."

"It must be a private joke," Tris said.

"Not private enough," T'Laren murmured.

"I'm pleased to meet you, T'Ex," Markow said. From the flatness in the artificial voice and the lack of expression in his slack face, it was impossible to tell if he knew that T'Ex wasn't her name. "I'd be more pleased if I knew who the hell you were, though. I can't imagine Lucy getting a woman into bed, so what are you, his bodyguard?"

"Among other things," T'Laren said.

"Dr. T'Laren is Q's psychiatrist," Dhawan said.

"Therapist, actually. I haven't got a psychiatric license." T'Laren concealed her annoyance at Dhawan. "Dr. Markow, why do you call Q 'Lucy'?"

"Aren't you halfway curious as to why he calls me Daedalus?"

"Yes, but I'm more curious about Lucy."

"Short for Lucifer," Markow explained. "And Q screwed it up. It should have been Icarus."

"It should have been. Then I could have called you Icky, and we would really have bewildered people."

Roth turned to T'Laren. "Dr. Markow's one of the greatest minds in Federation physics. When we were working against the Borg, he and Q worked together quite a bit, moreso than many of us. I'm afraid we all got a little strange when we were working against the Borg."

"I can imagine."

"Well, it was good to talk to you again, Dr. Markow," Dhawan said. "I've got to go keep Morakh and Milarca from killing each other."

"Oh, Morakh! My favorite bonebrain. I'd forgotten he was here," Q said. "Daedalus, do you mind terribly if I go over and bother him?"

"Of course I mind. I want to talk to you about this damned singularity, not watch you get smeared into pulp."

"No need to be afraid of Morakh. For all the Klingon bluster, he's really a big pussycat. A very big, very ugly pussycat."

"I'm not worried about Morakh. I'm worried about Dhawan."

Tris nodded. "He's right. You're probably beneath Morakh's notice. --In the sense of physical combat, of course."

"I personally think it's a side effect of time travel," Markow said.

The non sequitur threw T'Laren for a moment, but not Roth. "What makes you say that, Dr. Markow?" he asked.

"Stop with the Dr. Markows, Roth, you're going to make me feel old. I say that because if you look at the pattern formed by the fifth-dimensional interstitial matrices--"

"Oh, please, Daedalus. You're supposed to be a bright man, for a human."

Tris turned to T'Laren as the three physics experts descended into technobabble. "I suppose that's our cue to either leave or let our eyes politely glaze over and murmur like we know what they're talking about," he said.

"I really should stay and keep Q out of trouble."

"You're not doing too well so far."

"I can't exactly gag him."

"I don't know. I'd consider it if he were my patient."

"No, you wouldn't. You wouldn't actually kick him in the posterior either if he were your patient. Admit it, Tris."

"I suppose you're right-- which is why I'm glad he's not my patient." The two of them had started to walk away from the knot of arguing scientists. "I'm warning you, T'Laren, either he keeps himself under control or he is going to get a punch in the face, either from me or Shahrazad. It's our job-- not to mention Sovaz's-- to keep this madhouse under control. We've got all these volatile, obnoxious, arrogant assholes aboard, and adding Q to the mix was maybe not the most brilliant idea anyone had. I'm not going to interfere between you and your patient, but if he gets too disruptive, his ass is grass and I'm a terraformer. You understand?"

"You've gotten much better at the colorful Terran metaphors," T'Laren said.

"Yes, haven't I? It comes from being Bajoran. We already swear better than anyone else in the known universe."

"I had forgotten."

"Yeah." He snagged some hors d'oeuvres from a tray. "Want some?"

"I'll take a rice ball."

"Gone veggie again?" Tris shook his head. "I don't care what Starfleet says about tolerance for other races' customs, I know humanoids weren't intended to be vegetarians."

"Meat on Vulcan is bad for one; it's much richer in heavy metals than our plant life is."

"You're not on Vulcan."

T'Laren shrugged slightly. "You're not on Bajor. You still wear that earring."

"That's different."

"I don't see how."

He sighed. "Do you really want to have a stupid argument right now?"

T'Laren shook her head. "I've had enough of them lately."

Tris nodded. "I figured." He took a deep breath. "So. How've you been?"

She studied him intently. This was another ploy to get her to talk about it, she was sure. With Tris, it was best to be blunt. "Tris, I really don't want to talk about it, all right? The last few years have been... very bad. I just... would rather not speak of them. Not yet."

"All right."

"But I'll ask how you've been, if you're willing to tell me."

"Sure I'm willing... you've heard the big news, haven't you? You must have, unless you were in a monastery the past year or so."

"The big news?"

"The Occupation's over. The Cardassians packed up and went home. And a Starfleet officer found out that the Celestial Temple of the Prophets is really a stable wormhole to the Gamma Quadrant, so Bajor's actually of interest to someone. We've got a Provisional Government that may even last another three months before degenerating into chaos. You must have heard."

"Yes, of course. To be honest, Tris, I'd forgotten for a moment that Bajor was still occupied when I last spoke to you. It seems like... a much shorter time ago than it actually was." She grew pensive. "I was occupied with personal problems when I first heard about it, but once the significance sank in, I remember wondering if you would choose to go home."

"I thought about it." He shrugged. "I think I can do more good here."

He lied well to total strangers. To friends, though, his inclination was to be honest when possible, and as a result he was transparent to one who knew him well. "If you say so," T'Laren said evenly, indicating her disbelief by a slightly raised eyebrow.

Tris smiled wryly. "You still know how to see through my bullshit, I can tell." He looked away. "I'm... not sure how well I'd be received at home. They published my name as one of the 'Unsung Heroes of the Resistance' or some crap like that, but to most people I probably still look like a suck-up to the Cardassians." He shook his head. "Bajor's got too much history. I'm not interested in history. I don't like my history much-- I don't want to be the man I was on Bajor. And if I go back, that's what I'll be." He turned back to her. "Besides, while there's Bajorans in Starfleet, they all went through the Academy and got the edges polished off. Counselors can serve with Starfleet without being Starfleet officers themselves, so I can be out here and prove that Bajorans aren't all crazy terrorists. So in a sense, I do actually think I'm more use here."

"And you know aliens better than your own kind, now?" she asked softly.

"A little, yeah. I'm not as alienated-- ooh, bad pun, I didn't mean it-- as you are-- or were; you seem to be pretty comfortable in a Vulcan skin now. Except, of course, that real Vulcans don't get so upset with people who didn't do anything to them that they turn specifically and viciously cold to their loved ones."

"Real Vulcans do indeed," she said, refusing to rise to the bait. "Someone has been telling you tales about real Vulcans, I suspect."

"That would be Sovaz." His eyes wandered over to where she stood in a conversational knot, eagerly interrogating a Tellarite and a human about some arcane concept of physics. "She's a great kid, you know."

"You are not thinking what I suspect you're thinking."

"Of course not." His voice dripped disgust. "What do you think I am, a child molester? Give her ten years and maybe."

T'Laren shrugged. "I'm sorry if I've offended you, but Sovaz is twenty-seven. Most humanoids would consider her fair game."

"Sovaz is incredibly immature, even for a Vulcan. And I know about Vulcans being late bloomers." He looked at her. "It's because you're vegetarians," he said solemnly. "Look at you. You ate meat on Earth and you told me you got started when you were fifteen. Most Vulcans don't until their late twenties, isn't that what you told me? I personally think we should start a charity. Feed the starving Vulcans some protein. It'll do wonders for your sex lives."

"Early blooming is hardly an advantage on Vulcan; besides, I 'got started' because I was frightened, and you know me. Show me something I'm afraid of, and I'll dive headlong into it--"

"Like maybe dealing with your little sister?"

T'Laren shook her head. "Cruel, Tris."

"But true."

She changed the subject. "How long have you been counselor on the Yamato?"

"I got posted here as backup counselor, oh, maybe nine months ago. Then Counselor Seligman retired to teach the natives of Penu about learned optimism, about six months ago, so I ended up as main counselor on a Galaxy-class starship. Pretty impressive for a boy from Bajor, huh?"

"I'd thought you were going into psy-ops."

"Too much like what I did before. I wanted something completely different." He looked at her. "What about you?"

"You're astonishingly persistent, did you know?"

"It's one of my charms."

At that point a snatch of conversation caught her attention. "Excuse me." She headed back over to Q, quickly.

Q was facing Dr. Morakh, smirking slightly. Morakh's expression was unreadable, masked under an impassive Klingon scowl.

"Oh, you can admit it, we're all friends here," Q was saying. "For all your education and your posturing at being a rational being, you really would rather be ripping my head off than debating with me. Go ahead, confess. You Klingons are simply unfit for civilization."

"I doubt there are very many sentient beings you have ever met in your life who would not wish to rip your head off," Morakh retorted.

"That depends on how you define 'sentient'."

Morakh ignored that. "The distinction you are failing to make is that a civilized being would not rip your head off. Despite provocation. In fact, a civilized being, such as myself, would not want to."

"Oh really?" Q raised any eyebrow. "And here I thought you were supposed to enjoy that sort of thing. The joys of mayhem. Glorious battle and all that."

"If I attacked you, it would not be a battle," Morakh said. "It would simply be a slaughter."

"Same thing."

T'Laren interposed herself between the two. "I'm afraid I couldn't permit that," she said evenly.

Morakh scowled at her. "I had heard Vulcans were pacifists." He made it sound like a curse.

"We were forced to be," T'Laren said calmly. "We were far too good at war."

For several seconds they stared one another down. Then Morakh broke the stare, laughing. "I like you," he said. "You have courage. Be assured I won't attack your charge, T'Laren." He gazed at Q as if examining a herd animal. "It would be beneath my dignity to assault such a weakling."

"Or perhaps you're just afraid of Starfleet," Q said snidely.

Morakh looked at him again. "I have heard you tried to kill yourself," he said. "If you are too much of a coward to do the job properly, that is your problem. I will not be provoked into doing it for you."

He turned away. Q stared after him for several seconds, a look of astonishment on his face.

"Why did you provoke him like that?" T'Laren asked sharply.

Q shrugged. "To see what he'd do." He smiled. "Who'd have thought it? There actually is a brain under that craggy forehead. I'm impressed."

"I'm not," Markow said. "You're going to get yourself killed one of these days, Lucy."

"What can I say? Live dangerously, that's my motto."

"Get a new motto, then."

"I don't think he was in much danger, Peter," Roth said, giving the name the self-conscious edge of a man trying deliberately to use a first name. "I've dealt with Morakh before. He's really quite a calm fellow, for a Klingon."

A small albino woman with oversized golden eyes approached the small group. Her hair was short, a chin-length pageboy cut that curled under at the bottom, and she wore a tight blue satin bodysuit that left very little to the imagination. T'Laren saw Tris' eyes widen slightly in appreciation. She glanced back at Q, who nodded at the newcomer. "Dr. What's-your-name. A pleasure to see you again."

"I'm glad to see you made it to the conference, Q," the woman said. Her voice was soft but firm. "Rumor had you dead of acid poisoning."

"Well. The rumors of my death--"

"-- were greatly cliched," Markow said. "Try an original one."

"Dr. Markow, Dr. Roth, would it disturb you if I requested a few moments of Q's time? My researches have turned up an interesting question that I believe he's best equipped to answer, if he's willing."

"Of course not," Roth said. "We'd no intention of utterly monopolizing him."

"An interesting question regarding the singularity? Or some other aspect of physics?" Q asked.

"As regards history, actually. A hobby of mine."

Q rolled his eyes. "How typically Laon'l." He turned to T'Laren. "Her people are positively obsessive about their own history. I can't imagine why. A more tedious history would be difficult to come up with."

"There were intriguing spots," the woman said. She nodded at T'Laren. "I have heard you are an associate of Q's? Dr. T'Laren?"

The phrasing left it ambiguous as to whether the woman knew T'Laren was not a fellow physicist, but T'Laren didn't feel the need to explain her relationship with Q again. "Yes."

"I am Professor Miari Elejani Baíi of New Laon." The woman clasped her fists together between her breasts and then spread her palms out toward T'Laren in what was obviously a ritual greeting. "I must warn you that I am an empath."

In other words, she had noted the relaxed condition of T'Laren's mental shielding, and thought T'Laren should know that she could read T'Laren's emotions through it. "Thank you for warning me," T'Laren said, but didn't strengthen her shields-- she was perfectly comfortable at the moment. She recognized the species now. Laon'l were a very recent addition to the Federation, powerfully empathic relatives of the Scamarans, who had been Federation members for some time and had very slight empathic gifts. Laon'l mindhealers were supposed to match Betazoids for their skills in repairing damaged psyches. But Laon'l, unlike their Scamaran cousins, were supposed to be physically fragile and emotionally reclusive, preferring to stay on their own world. T'Laren had never met one.

Elejani Baíi turned back to Q, who picked up his drink and sipped at it serenely. "Since the Reunification, Laon'l scholars have been fascinated by the circumstances of our separation from the Scamarans," she said. "There has been a revitalization of interest in the question of Emaroth."

"No doubt your Scamaran cousins think you're wasting time."

"Scamarans are people of action. We Laon'l have undertaken only one major action in our history. Of course you are familiar with our history?"

"Fairly conversant," Q said.

"I'm not," Markow said.

T'Laren thought she detected slight irritation in Elejani Baíi's face. No doubt she really wanted to pose her question to Q, not to explain herself to Markow. But Markow was far too respected in the scientific community, even by people who thought his theories were ridiculous, for her to ignore him. "Then I shall tell the whole story, so that we all understand and can converse," Elejani Baíi said-- it sounded like a ritual phrase.

"How about you just ask me the question, and if Daedalus really wants to hear it, you can tell him the whole thing later," Q suggested.

"The question concerns Daishenéon Emaroth."

"Why does that not surprise me?"

"Who?" Markow asked. "Ignore Lucy, he's being an ass. I want to hear this."

Q sighed. "Oh, go on, Dr. Elejani," he said. "Heavens forfend that the great Peter Markow should misunderstand a single minute of a conversation not aimed at him."

"If it is acceptable," Elejani Baíi said. She turned to face Markow and Roth. "My people are a very old race, older far than humanity. We had a civilization on our homeworld of Old Laon for ten thousand years, with a technology based primarily on biogenetics and our empathic powers. But we had never left our world. We held no interest in space. In fact, in our mythos, the sky was what you might call Hell-- the source of metaphysic dangers to the soul, the home of demons and the land of the tormented dead. We feared that when we looked to the stars, the stars might suck out our souls. We were, in fact, the only race I've ever heard of who developed a high level of technology without so much as putting up a satellite."

"They were, in fact, the most boring people you've ever heard of," Q said. "No ambition, no drive to learn, no need to explore. They explored their own pathetic little world, covered it with their holistic and oh-so-terribly harmonious cities, and then sat and analyzed their own navels for ten thousand years."

"You speak as if you were there," Elejani Baíi said.

"I was."

"Good, then you will be able to answer my question." She turned back to the others. "Three thousand years ago, we were... confronted with a being who called herself Emaroth. She claimed to come from space, and so we dubbed her a demon-- a term that seemed more and more accurate as the years went by. Emaroth was a creature of immense power, and to us it seemed great malevolence. She informed us-- in terms not unlike those that Q just used-- that we had wasted our potential, squandered the promise of our sentience and the bounty of our world, and that therefore she was taking possession of our planet. Every year, she would extract a tithe of 1,000 of our best and brightest, and carry them off to Hell."

"And you believed this?" Markow asked. "That she was taking them to Hell?"

"Oh, yes," Elejani Baíi said calmly. "You must understand that we were not a superstitious people-- we rarely spoke of things like Hell and demons. But I have watched the records we made at the time, and it is hard to see how a thinking being could not believe. Emaroth could-- and did-- level buildings with a gesture, make people vanish and reappear, raise the dead or kill with a thought. We called her Daishenéon-- a term that's something of a pun; it can mean either Great Lady, Empress, or Great Demon. The word Emaroth itself was intrinsically meaningless but seemed to be related to our words for 'judge' and 'challenger'." She sipped at a drink Roth handed her. "Also it may help to understand that just as humanity has a predisposition toward patriarchy, we Laon'l have a predisposition toward matriarchy. Our sexes were equal under the law, but we were more likely to perceive a woman as an authority figure, just as you are more likely to see authority in a male." She cast a sidewise glance at Q, who had a studiedly bland expression.

"We did whatever we could to stop Emaroth. We shot at her, poisoned her, blew up our own buildings around her. She merely laughed-- she didn't even exact retribution for the attempts, which terrified us even more. Our best efforts were completely beneath her. Our most powerful psis united in an attempt to read her mind. Their brains were burnt out by the effort, and Emaroth implied that she hadn't even consciously assaulted them-- according to her, she was simply too advanced a form of life for the comprehension of our limited brains."

"Sounds like you'd get along with her," Markow said to Q.

"Undoubtedly."

"Some of us tried desperately to propitiate her, reinstituting the ancient custom of child sacrifice. Emaroth resurrected the children and opened the ground beneath the sacrificers, dropping them into the core of Old Laon, because she was annoyed by the attempt. She insisted that there was nothing we could do to stop her, that so long as we lived on Old Laon she would take her claim of 1,000 every year.

"And somehow that sparked an idea. Emaroth had told us that the stars we feared were suns like ours, that harbored worlds like ours. Space itself might be hellish, but if we could cross through it to a new world... it was our world and the people on it Emaroth had laid claim to. She made that very clear. Somehow, after ten thousand years of fearing the stars, we became desperate enough to try to flee to them.

"It took three generations of feverish work for us to develop a ship. The best we managed was impulse drive; our ships would be generation ships, but once we were free of our world we would be free of Emaroth, whether we had found a new world yet or no."

"Only three generations?" T'Laren raised an eyebrow. "I've never heard of a species that developed impulse drive that quickly without some outside help."

"You must understand the impetus. All the most intelligent of our kind were going into physics. People who might have gone into biochemistry or psychology were driven by the fear that Emaroth would take them as part of her tithe. Our leaders, who fancied themselves the best and brightest of Laon, feared the same, and so all our world's resources were being diverted toward escape." She sipped again at her drink. "Finally it came time. We persuaded all but six million of our people to leave in the generation ships; those six million were either too stubborn to go, or feared that Emaroth was tricking us into space where she could take us all, or suspected that Emaroth would never get around to them or their families with all the other people left behind to choose from. So we parted from our remaining people, and left our world for the 100-year-journey to New Laon.

"50 years away from Old Laon, we saw our sun go nova. Old Laon and all the people we left behind, all our history, all our ruins, were no more than elemental particles. And we believed Emaroth had done it out of malice or rage, that we'd escaped her grasp, and we cursed her name for 3,000 years. And after we reached our new world, we once more averted our eyes from the stars.

"Fifteen years ago, we were contacted by the Federation. We discovered that those taken in Emaroth's tithe had been transported to a harsh, deadly world, that they had fought and finally tamed-- the world they called Scamara. Our lost brethren had also developed space flight, built colonies, and joined the Federation. They had technology we had only dreamed of, and access to the bounties of a hundred worlds. They persuaded us that space was not inhabited by devils, and we consented to join the Federation, overjoyed by our reunion with them.

"And so the question of Emaroth has been reopened-- who she was, what her motives were, how she did the things she did. Most of my people still believe Emaroth to be malevolent-- that she chased us from our world out of petty malice. And yet recently we have used warp drive to intercept the light from Old Laon, from before the nova, and we've discovered that there was evidence of the impending nova hundreds of years before Emaroth's arrival. So I have wondered if perhaps Emaroth did not save our world; that, with full consciousness of the upcoming nova, she harried our people into developing the tools to save ourselves. If one takes the premise that Emaroth truly believed that we had squandered our potential, then her actions with the Scamarans make sense-- by being forced to live on a harsh and unforgiving world, the Scamarans were forced to become problem solvers and explorers, and ended up achieving space flight on their own, at a much higher level than we did."

"Which is why the Scamarans are so much more interesting than you," Q said.

"Exactly." Elejani Baíi turned to Q. "When I heard of you, and your race, I was struck by the similarities between your kind and Emaroth. A race of powerful beings that arbitrarily pronounce judgment on less advanced races, that perform malevolent acts that are in the long run beneficial-- such as your warning humanity about the dangers of the Borg..."

Q shrugged. "There are a lot of near-omnipotent races out there. She could have been a Douwd. Or a Metraskan. Or an Organian, though probably not."

"But that is what I have wanted for some time to ask you. You should know, one way or another. Was Emaroth one of your people? And if she was, was she acting out of sheer malevolence, as many of my kind believe, or was she trying to save us?"

"What do you think?" Q asked, in his best I'm-certainly-not-going-to-give-everything-away voice.

Elejani Baíi smiled. "I think that I am an empath," she said. "And I think that for all the control you have of your face, you have very little control over what an empath may sense of your emotions. And therefore I think that you have just answered both of my questions-- Daishenéon."

As Q's eyes widened, Elejani Baíi suddenly reached up and put her arms around his neck, pulling herself up. T'Laren tensed, prepared to grab Elejani Baíi if necessary, but the Laon'l woman merely kissed Q on the cheek and released him. "Few of my people would appreciate what you've done for us," she said. "But I understand. I give you the gratitude of all my people."

She turned away and walked off into the crowd before anyone could say anything. Finally, Markow said, "Well?"

"Well what?" Q asked, still staring after Elejani Baíi as if she'd just revealed that she was his long-lost mother.

"Well, was she right? Did you save her people?"

Q turned to Markow and smiled evilly. "She thinks so," he said. "And who am I to turn down a potential ally? Even perhaps a deluded one?"

Roth laughed. "You utter dog. You tricked her?"

Q shrugged, an innocent expression on his face. "What she wants to believe isn't any concern of mine, is it?"

T'Laren studied him, unconvinced. She had more experience reading Q's expressions than the others here, she suspected. And when Elejani Baíi had called him Daishenéon, he'd had the same expression he got when T'Laren surprised him by figuring out something he'd hidden from her. It struck her as curious, if it were true-- not the idea that it was true; she saw nothing inconsistent between Elejani Baíi's story and Q's personality. He had never given her any kind of detail on the things he'd done in his past life, and none of the incidents mentioned in his records were instances of him helping a race out-- but then, this story hardly described an unambiguous situation in that regard, either. What would the Scamarans do to Q if they decided that he was the being who had exiled them from their original home? Even if Q had done it to save them from their star going nova, they might demand retribution-- after all, someone with Q's powers could simply have prevented the star from going nova, or could have transported them to a kind world like their own, not a hellhole that killed thousands before they finally tamed it. It was entirely possible that some of the ones who'd come looking for Q had benefited from his actions in some roundabout way-- T'Laren had no trouble reconciling that with what she knew of him.

But why, if it were true, would he hide it from Roth and Markow? Everyone knew Q had committed atrocities. Why wasn't he eager to let people know that he had done good deeds as well? She thought she knew why he didn't go about protesting that he'd done wonderful things, but why, when someone had stood up and described a good deed he'd done, did he lie and imply he hadn't done it? Was he getting some emotional benefit out of being perceived as entirely villainous? If so, she'd have to work on that with him-- it would be very difficult to get him to make friends if he wanted everyone to think of him as the bad guy.

"Well, that was fun," Tris murmured. "This kind of thing happen often?"

"I'm not sure," T'Laren murmured back. "I've never seen it before, but I'm afraid that proves little."

At this point a middle-aged Japanese man with short-cropped, solid gray hair approached. From a glance at the pips on his dress uniform, T'Laren realized he had to be Captain Okita.

Q seemed to notice him at the same time. "Ah, the mysterious Captain Okita," he said. "I'm so glad you've finally come to say hello."

Okita smiled genially. T'Laren had a definite feeling that nothing whatsoever would appear to offend this man unless he chose to let it. He nodded at the three scientists. "Dr. Markow. Q. It's an honor to have individuals of your distinction aboard Yamato," he said, still smiling. "And Dr. Roth, I believe we met a few days ago? How are you enjoying your stay thus far?"

"Well, I can't say it's been boring," Roth said, grinning.

"I suppose a little honor must go a very long way," Q said to Markow.

"Don't be an ass, Lucy."

"Ah, the day-to-day running of a starship is a time-consuming business," Okita said. "One can't allow as much time for pleasure as one would hope." He turned to T'Laren. "Dr. T'Laren. So glad to see you well. Your young sister Sovaz is shaping up into a fine officer."

"She honors her family," T'Laren said. "But I'm afraid that family is no longer mine, Captain. Sovaz is no longer my sister."

"It's a shame to hear that. I'd be proud to have her as a sister, myself."

"Do they teach you that in command school at the Academy?" Q asked. "Or is it a little trick you've picked up along the way?"

Okita turned back to him, still smiling. "Teach what?"

"How to insult people while sounding as if you're complimenting them. It's a neat trick, wherever you learned it."

Markow rolled his eyes, and Roth pressed a hand to his forehead. Okita's smile broadened slightly. "I've been told you take pride in being difficult, Mr. Q," he said.

"A scurrilous rumor."

"I'm sure it is." He nodded at all five of them. "It's been pleasant talking to you, but duty calls, I'm afraid." He left.

"Well, that was a rather astonishing fellow," Roth said.

"He does that," Tris said. "It's his 'man of mystery' act. Ride into town, greet the diplomats warmly, then ride off into the sunset again."

"He doesn't sound very fun at parties," Q said.

"As if you ever get invited to parties," Markow said.

"I get invited to all the best ones."

"Define best."

"The ones I'm at, of course."

"Anyway," Tris said to T'Laren, ignoring the interplay between the physicists. "I'm kind of supposed to circulate. If you feel like talking, look me up after the reception."

"Of course."

T'Laren spent the rest of the reception watching Q. There were no more near-disasters as there had been with Morakh; he spent most of the time trading witticisms and technobabble with Roth and Markow, occasionally breaking stride to chat with someone else who showed up but making no attempt to circulate. The three of them seemed perfectly content to be a monobloc, indivisible by the conversational sorties of others.

It grew late. The reception started to fray, bleeding off people to their rooms for the night, and T'Laren could see that Q was tiring. When she suggested to him that he might wish to leave, however, he laughed her off. Finally Markow said, rather abruptly, "I'm going to bed. Goodbye."

"You can't leave now, Daedalus," Q protested. His tone was light and joking, but there was a faint desperate edge to it. "The night is still young!"

"The night is, but I'm not. Just because you can go 72 hours on a catnap doesn't mean we mere mortals can duplicate the feat. Good night."

As his chair floated off, Roth said somewhat apologetically, "Perhaps we should both get some rest. The conference starts at 1100 tomorrow, you know."

"Oh, I scoff at sleep. Try spending three weeks in Li's sickbay and you'd be sick of sleeping too."

"Agreed," Roth said, grinning. "But I'm beginning to think the caterers would like for us to get out of here..."

"Well, perhaps we should find a more congenial location. T'Laren! You know a bit about starships. Where would you suggest we go?"

"Why not to our rooms?" T'Laren suggested. She was tiring herself, and could see that Q was exhausting himself-- his voice was a little too manic, his movements suggestive of punchiness, his laughter a bit shrill.

Q blinked at her. "T'Laren. Are you seriously suggesting I take Roth to my room?" he asked. "Whatever would the neighbors think?"

"Probably the wrong thing... more's the pity," Harry said.

"I know, I know, one of the great tragedies of your life, right? I can't help it that I find your silly human sexual customs quite nauseating. It's nothing personal, you know."

"Well, you can't say something's nauseating if you haven't tried it, now can you?" Roth was definitely punchy, and maybe, T'Laren thought, a bit drunk-- synthehol rarely impaired one's motor coordination, but it was just as good as real alcohol at lowering inhibitions.

"I can. I know everything, remember?"

"You used to know everything. You forgot most of it."

"I can still say something's nauseating," Q said lightly. "Besides. As flattering as I find the attention, I assure you, Harry, if you knew what I looked like under this monkey suit at the moment you would be considerably less interest