Only Human by Alara Rogers  
  
Part III: Yamato  
  
With minor revisions to the parts posted before, here is all of  
Only Human Chapter III. 
  
Paramount owns Q and the universe; I own the original characters. 
No copyright infringement is intended.  Not to be sold for profit.   
 
ONLY HUMAN (for those who haven't caught the story thus far) is an  
alternate universe, based on the premise that Q lost his powers for  
good in "Deja Q."  In exchange for protection, he offered the  
Federation the benefit of his advanced knowledge, and was transferred  
to Starbase 56.  Three years later, miserable beyond endurance, Q  
attempted to kill himself.  
  
Dr. T'Laren, Vulcan xenopsychologist and former Starfleet counselor,  
turned up at this point, claiming that Starfleet had hired her as Q's  
therapist.  In fact, it turned out that she was really hired by the Q  
Continuum, in the person of the Q who got Q thrown out, whom T'Laren  
refers to as Lhoviri.  T'Laren persuaded Q to accept her help and  
allow her to counsel him through his depression.  To that end, they  
left Starbase 56 on T'Laren's ship Ketaya-- a gift from Lhoviri, with  
some surprising capabilities-- and headed for the starship Yamato,  
which was currently hosting a physics conference.  
  
Over the course of the past weeks of travel, Q has come to trust  
T'Laren, more or less, though they've had some knock-down-drag-out  
fights in the process.  At the end of Part II, Q decided that he no  
longer wanted to die.  Part III details 's adventures at the scientific  
conference aboard the Yamato, T'Laren's problems as her  
somewhat shady past comes back to haunt her in the forms of her  
young sister-in-law and her former lover, and the ups and downs  
of Q and T'Laren's relations with one another.  Section 14 also  
deals explicitly with sexual themes, though I consider it suitable  
for teens and mature Congresspersons (like Patrick Leahy, who  
opposed the CDA.)  
  
Note that elements of this chapter and previous ones contradict 
the Voyager episode "The Q and the Grey."  I remain convinced 
that my version of the Continuum is more interesting than the 
vision we were presented with in that episode, and so I have not 
revised to fit that episode, as it's too stupid to be canon. :-) 
 
Parts I - III are all available at the following sites: 
 
FTP: 
 
ftp://ftp.netcom.com/pub/al/aleph/trek 
ftp://ftp.europa.com/outgoing/mercutio/alt.fan.q 
ftp://aviary.share.net/pub/startrek/tng 
 
Web: 
 
http://www.europa.com/~mercutio/Q.html 
http://aviary.share.net/~alara 
http://www1.mhv.net/~alara/ohtree.html 
 
Send comments to aleph@netcom.com. 
             *                   *                    *   

	In her own room, T'Laren attempted to meditate.  Exhaustion made 
this impossible, fraying her concentration and dragging her down.  
Before she knew it she was asleep.
		She was attempting to knit a pair of socks for her 
	father.  It was for a school project of some kind.  Q came 
	into the room.  "T'Laren, I've got something to show you."
		"Can it wait?"  She held up the socks.
		"He's got awfully smelly feet, T'Laren."  By which she 
	understood him to mean that her father had been dead for ten 
	years, now.  Smelly feet indeed.
		"Where are we going?"  she asked Q.
		"Where do we ever go?"
		They appeared on the plains of Vulcan, outside the Hall
	of Ancient Thought.  T'Laren realized that the being she had 
	thought Q was in fact Lhoviri, wearing Q's form.  "Why?"  she 
	asked him, meaning why did he look like his brother.
		"For dramatic effect, of course," Lhoviri said.  "Watch."
		Sovaz approached at the head of a procession.  Her 
	cousins and her cousins-in-law bore a coffin on their 
	shoulders.  Behind the coffin walked T'Laren's mother Helene, 
	sniffling and dressed in black.  T'Laren looked away from the 
	coffin, certain she knew who was inside.  "I don't want to see 
	this," she said.
		"Name me one thing I wanted to see and we'll be even."  
	Now he was Q again.
		The coffin was laid out on a stone slab.  Sovaz held the 
	Romulan knife, still green with Soram's blood, and stabbed the 
	coffin with it in a Romulan death ritual.  "I'm sorry!"  
	T'Laren screamed, unable to bear Sovaz's stony face any more.  
	"I'm sorry, I'm sorry, forgive me!"
		Sovaz looked up at her.  "Who are you?"  she asked.
		"I'm your sister!"
		"My sister is dead," Sovaz said coldly.  She flipped open 
	the coffin, and there was T'Laren, body bruised and mottled 
	from her exposure to vacuum.
		"But I didn't-- it was changed--"  She looked to Lhoviri, 
	who still looked like Q.  "Do something!"
		"Actions have consequences, my dear," he said.  "Even all 
	the power of the Q can't wash the blood away."
		"You are the other one, the replica," Sovaz said.  "MY 
	sister is dead.  And YOU have murdered my brother."
		"You were supposed to save me!"  she cried to Q.  Whether 
	her patient or her benefactor, the same name applied.  They 
	were both Q.  
		"Who's going to save you from yourself?"  he replied...
	She jerked awake with a gasp.
	It had been months since she'd allowed herself to dream.  She 
remembered the last time-- awakening, screaming, the darkness of the 
room around her become the darkness of her own tomb, and Lhoviri had 
been there, coaxing her back to sleep, but she would not... Lhoviri had 
warned her that if she tried to use the meditative disciplines to hold 
off dreaming entirely, it would be worse for her when her control 
finally broke.  Brittle, she had assured him that she had no intention 
of breaking, ever again.
	*Psychologist, heal thyself.*  At least she hadn't screamed.  If 
she'd woken Q, she would not have liked having to explain that she was 
the one with the nightmare this time.  *What a hypocrite you are!  You 
say he's psychologically addicted to sedatives, that he uses them to 
escape his dreams rather than facing the trauma that causes them.  All 
true, but what is your excuse, dear doctor?  You should know better!*
	She was not sweating-- sweat was too precious a commodity on a 
desert to be released by fear.  Vulcans only sweated when it was too 
hot even for them, or when they exerted themselves.  But she was 
flushed green, and her heart pounded, and she was lightheaded from the 
adrenaline surge.  After too long controlling themselves, Vulcans were 
known to get sick from sudden surges of emotion.  T'Laren concentrated 
on the disciplines, ordering her rebellious body to compensate for the 
adrenaline reaction.  After a moment, she stood up, throwing off her 
covers.  She needed something else to concentrate on, something to burn 
out the rush of energy that made her lightheaded.
			*				*				*
	It was 0300 hours, the truly dead time in a starship's 
recreational centers.  Everyone aboard was, as a general rule, either 
asleep or on duty at an hour like this, and the holodecks were 
generally free, unless someone had reserved one overnight.  T'Laren 
checked, and found that none of them had been so reserved.
	She slid the data solid into the slot by the door, and entered.  
"Computer.  Activate training routine 9."
	The program on the data solid sprang to life.  Gravity dragged at 
her, a sudden downward yanking as her weight increased under Romulus 
gee, too close to Vulcan gee for her to detect the difference.  But the 
atmosphere was different; as hot as Vulcan, but wetter, the air damp 
like Earth's and the oxygen thick.  It was easy to hyperventilate in 
such an environment, with the gee subconsciously informing her body 
that she was on Vulcan now.
	Four adult Romulan men came over the ridge ahead of her.  They 
were not carrying phasers; the purpose of this simulation wasn't to 
test T'Laren's shooting abilities.  She dropped into a fighting stance, 
legs positioned to maximize her balance, arms up and ready.  At the 
same time, she let her face change, a savage smile spreading across it.  
Romulans and Vulcans could, under most circumstances, tell one another 
apart from the bone structure of their faces.  But a Vulcan who behaved 
in an obviously Romulan fashion would confuse both races; there were 
far more genetic throwbacks, Romulans who looked like Vulcans, than 
there were Vulcans who would smile with savage passion.  They would 
expect her to be one of them, to fight like a Romulan.  Good.
	Humans were arguably one of the physically weakest of the powerful 
races in known space; even the Ferengi, while weaker on average, were 
stronger than humans pound for pound-- it was just that humans were 
bigger than Ferengi.  With typical ingenuity, humans had turned this 
racial weakness to an advantage, designing martial arts techniques that 
required very little physical strength, no more than a typical human 
had, and then teaching these techniques to Starfleet cadets.  The 
reason Starfleet officers, overwhelmingly human, could hold their own 
in physical combat against far stronger races such as Klingons or 
Nausicaans or Romulans was the fact that those races, having strength, 
had never developed the techniques that did not require it.  For a 
small, slight Vulcan female raised under Earth gee, physically weaker 
than other Vulcans and even than some humans, these techniques had 
proved vitally useful.  For her training to go undercover, T'Laren had 
also adopted some of the Romulan *shal kemat* techniques-- the fighting 
style developed by Romulan women to hold their own against their own 
men, another martial arts technique that owed little to physical 
strength.  She used that mostly now, with a bit of her Starfleet 
training thrown in, to disable the first man that came at her, turning 
the force of his rush against him to throw him some distance.  The next 
man came at her with arms wide, in an attempt to bear-hug and grapple.  
She ducked under him, grabbed him and threw him as well.
	The next two were warier, circling her slowly, as their friends 
picked themselves off the ground.  In a real fight, T'Laren would know 
herself to be outmatched at this point, and either surrender or run for 
it.  That was, however, not the purpose of this simulation.  
	It was difficult to keep all of them in focus.  T'Laren knew that 
if she didn't do something, the two she had attacked would recover-- 
she had only thrown them; they would only be winded, not badly hurt-- 
and then she would have to deal with four at once again.  She edged 
away from the battleground, showing every sign of preparing to break 
and run.  The two still standing watched intently, the look of 
predators waiting for the prey to break and run.  T'Laren obliged them.
	One of the two charged her.  At the last possible second T'Laren 
ducked down, reached up and grabbed the man as he lunged, throwing him 
over her head.  This was the second time she'd used that technique-- a 
bad idea; the simulations had been programmed to learn from their 
companions' mistakes.  She straightened up and spun, sensing danger, to 
find herself directly facing the fourth.  He hit her, hard, sending her 
flying to the ground.
	Though she knew what to do, she didn't do it in time, her 
compensatory techniques thrown off by the heavier gravity.  T'Laren hit 
the ground wrong, unable to roll and get back to her feet in time to 
keep the Romulan from diving onto her and pinning her with his weight.  
He hit her, trying to subdue her long enough that he could grab her 
arms, which she was moving rapidly.  As he went after one, another one 
came up and found the junction at his neck.  Since he had been 
programmed to expect a Romulan woman, given T'Laren's behavior, he had 
not been programmed to expect a nerve pinch.
	As she pushed him off her and stood, one of the others grabbed her 
from behind.  Inexcusably clumsy of her, to allow that.  She tried to 
flip him, but he was prepared for that-- he lifted her off the ground, 
so she had no leverage and all the advantage was contained in his 
height and superior strength.  T'Laren went completely limp and 
unresisting as he began to squeeze her, so he would assume he had 
already taken the fight out of her.  The moment he stopped squeezing, 
she twisted and kicked backward, hard, into his kneecap, breaking it.  
The Romulan screamed and dropped her.
	The two remaining Romulans were right there as she sprang back to 
her feet, though.  They doubleteamed her, punching her repeatedly so 
she couldn't use the motion against them and throw them.  She managed 
to grab one and try to fling him, but he outmaneuvered her, yanking 
*her* off-balance.  Then the fourth one chopped at the side of her 
neck-- the primitive precursor of the nerve pinch, the move as done by 
Romulans had neither the safety ratio nor the effectiveness of the 
millennia-refined Vulcan version, but it was sufficient.  T'Laren 
sagged, stunned, and the simulation froze.  She fell out of the one 
Romulan's grip and hit the dirt heavily, unable to persuade her body to 
work.  The Vulcan version produced unconsciousness 98% of the time, 
rarely this sick, stunned numbness.  
	Well.  A rather dismal showing over all.  She had never been 
defeated this quickly-- when she'd first been introduced to this 
program, after training simulation 8 in which she'd fought one Klingon, 
it had taken the four stupid Romulans five minutes to subdue her.  This 
had been one point six minutes.  Once, she had been able to defeat all 
four Romulans in less than two minutes on a consistent basis... not 
that that had done any good; the one time she had needed her fighting 
skills behind the Neutral Zone, she had known, with logic and gut and 
every fiber of her being, that even with the element of surprise on her 
side she would never win.  She would be hurt, and subdued, and then 
handed over to the elite Tal Shiar telepaths to be mindraped.  Instead, 
she had chosen an entirely different kind of arena, used her body as a 
weapon in a totally different sense--  two totally different senses, in 
fact-- and forever destroyed her own innocence...
	The downward slide had begun after that, the emotional turmoil, 
the needs Soram would not fulfill, the violence of her passions-- in 
hindsight she could see it had all begun after that one night.  Perhaps 
she should have used martial arts on Melor after all.  Perhaps in the 
end the damage would have been less.
	Tears stung her eyes.  Stunned as she was, she could not summon up 
the control of body and mind to prevent them.  She lay there, unable to 
move, for several minutes, until pins and needles shot through her 
spine and sensation slowly returned.  This hadn't helped much.  All it 
had done was show her how much retraining she needed.  Q would depend 
on her as a bodyguard, and she couldn't even disable four artificial 
Romulans.  And if she were smart, now, she'd go to Sickbay and get the 
various bruises and scrapes she'd just picked up treated before Q saw 
them and asked what was wrong.  She didn't want to go to Sickbay-- most 
doctors were human, and had a falsely jovial need to make small talk 
with a patient, to ask how she got hurt and warn her against doing it 
again.  The artificial friendliness of humans was more than she thought 
she could take right now-- but it would be utterly moronic to waste a 
healing trance on this.  Sighing, she struggled to her feet, summoned 
up her control, and left the holodeck, the program vanishing behind 
her.
			*				*				*
	The intercom bleeped at an hour that human beings were most 
certainly not evolved to be awoken at.  Q came fully awake, heart 
pounding, convinced that this was the notification of impending Borg 
invasion, and then realized that these were not his quarters on 
Starbase 56.  He puzzled over this for a few seconds as the intercom 
bleeped again.  Slowly it dawned on him that the Borg had been defeated 
two years ago and that he was currently on Yamato for a conference.  
Right.  That made sense.
	"Q here."
	"Are you all right, Q?"  a perky young Vulcan asked.  Q hated 
perky young people.  Perky young Vulcans were the worst.
	"I'm perfectly fine, Sovaz.  Nothing that another six years of 
sleep wouldn't cure.  Why did you feel the need to call and check up on 
me?"
	"Are you aware that it's 1115 hours?  The conference was supposed 
to have started 15 minutes ago."
	So it was.  Q checked the chronometer.  It had to be 
malfunctioning.  The last time he'd looked at it, it said 0640 hours, 
and that had only been a few minutes ago.
	"I was planning on being fashionably late, actually," he said.  
	"I don't think there are any species aboard that really consider 
lateness to be fashionable," Sovaz said seriously.  "But I will confess 
that I'm not an expert on what various beings consider fashionable or 
not."
	"You're not?  I *never* would have known."
	"No, I'm not."  Puzzlement, hesitation, then sudden comprehension.  
"Oh!  You're being sarcastic.  I see."
	"A remarkable deduction.  Here's one of those freebies for you, my 
dear.  Bowl cuts are not considered fashionable by *anybody*.  
Especially when they've been growing out for half a year."  Q sighed.  
"Is everybody else there?"
	"Several members have begged off due to illness.  Are you ill?"
	"No, and neither are they.  I'd suspect that *somebody* found the 
real stuff in amongst the synthehol.  I, however, am making a personal 
statement by being late.  You can tell them that."
	"So when do you plan to arrive?"
	"When I feel like it."  He relented.  "In an hour.  Good-*bye*, 
Sovaz."
	Now where the hell was T'Laren?  And why hadn't she woken him up?  
Q hadn't planned to oversleep, but he had forgotten to tell the 
computer to wake him-- not normally a major oversight, since normally 
he had his own personal computer with the infallible time sense come in 
and wake him if he overslept.  Where *was* she?  He got up and padded 
out of the room, leaning on the bell to hers.  No answer.
	"Computer, locate T'Laren."
	"Dr. T'Laren is in Holodeck 3."
	"Well, that's just peachy."  He touched his badge.  "Q to T'Laren, 
where the hell are you?"
	A few seconds lag time.  "In Holodeck 3," she finally replied-- 
which, of course, he knew, having just asked the computer.  Q made an 
exasperated noise.
	"Let me rephrase that.  What the hell are you *doing* in Holodeck 
3?"
	"Exercising and training."  She sounded drained.  "Why aren't you 
at the conference?"
	"Because no one was around to wake me up," he told her in a tone 
of infinite patience.
	"You didn't set the computer to wake you."
	"No, I didn't.  A small oversight.  I didn't realize you'd be 
*exercising* at this ungodly hour--"
	"Ungodly?  It's 1120.  You normally get up two hours before this.  
Of course, you don't normally wait until 0300 to go to bed."
	"Nor do I normally spend four hours tossing and turning, drifting 
off and waking up with nightmares, and generally getting no sleep at 
all.  Actually, come to think of it, that *has* been normal since I met 
you."
	She sighed.  "You can't have it both ways, Q," she said.  "Either 
I coddle and protect you from yourself, which means you grant me 
control over you, or you take responsibility for your own behavior in 
exchange for the freedom to do as you wish.  You've made it abundantly 
clear that you don't want to do what I tell you when I tell you 
something for your own good.  Such as suggesting that you might want to 
go to bed at a reasonable hour."
	"Well, if I had *known* that you had given up on trying to be my 
mommy, I would have *realized* I couldn't depend on you to wake me up.  
What if I had needed you?"
	"You could have called me.  As you apparently did, so I must 
assume that you know how to operate a combadge."
	So she wanted to get snippy, eh?  "You're obviously incapable of 
being reasonable at the moment,"  Q said loftily.  "I have a conference 
to attend.  Goodbye, T'Laren."  Let her chew on that one.
	
	It was actually an hour and a half before he considered himself 
presentable enough to appear at the conference.  When he walked in, 
there appeared to be a heated debate in progress.  Everyone stopped 
talking for a moment and looked over at him.
	"Q.  How nice of you to join us," Dhawan said with heavy sarcasm.
	"I thought I'd give you some time to formulate your silly little 
theories and marshal your arguments before I came in and explained 
everything to you," Q said.  "Please, don't stop arguing on my account.  
Go on with your debate.  I'm sure it's quite entertaining."
	"I can't imagine how you'd find it so," Dr. Anne Christian said 
coldly.  "Nobody's getting killed."
	Dr. Christian made Q extremely uncomfortable.  He smiled to cover 
his discomfort.  She was another name he'd seemed to have overlooked on 
the guest list.  Perhaps he should check the roster again.  "Anne, 
dear, you wound me.  Do you think I have a one-track mind?"
	"Q's character is dead.  Can we stop assassinating it now and do 
something useful?"  Markow asked.  "Dhawan, I can't believe that a 
person who's gotten to be science officer on a Galaxy-class starship 
could overlook an effect of that magnitude..."
	Q sat down in one of the many empty chairs toward the end of the 
table-- apparently a lot of people hadn't shown up, including Roth and 
Morakh.  Too bad; Roth was fun to sit next to and whisper rude comments 
about others, and Morakh was generally fun to bait.  He quickly picked 
up the gist of the argument and smiled to himself.  They weren't even 
in the right ballpark-- like philosophers attempting to deduce the 
circumference of the flat Earth.  
	For the next half hour, Q listened to their silly arguments, not 
entirely able to repress a smirk, as he doodled idly on his datapad.  
The debate was between two different theories-- if anyone had anything 
entirely different, they weren't mentioning it.  Markow's was, as it 
had been last night, that it was a side effect of time travel, which 
begged the question of whose time travel, obviously.  Q had intended 
last night to get the evidence to refute that one, as he had a gut 
certainty it was wrong, but he hadn't yet figured out *why* it was 
wrong, other than his intuitive sense that the universe just didn't 
work like that.  The other argument, proposed by a Romulan woman named 
Milarca, was that the singularity was a gateway to an alternate 
universe, and that was just rampant idiocy.  For some reason, several 
people seemed to agree with her, and were arguing with Markow and a 
Vulcan named Toral, who was a proponent of Markow's theory.  Most of 
the others were merely adding commentary to the debate.  
	Finally, in a poisonous voice, Shahrazad Dhawan finally gave Q his 
opening.  "Well, why don't we ask the self-proclaimed expert?"  she 
declaimed, getting up and walking over to Q.  "I suppose this puzzle is 
so terribly obvious to you that you have nothing better to do than 
doodle on your padd."
	She was trying to shame Q.  Q smiled at her with genuine delight-- 
it was not often he met someone as terribly inept at attacking him as 
Dhawan.  "Commander Dhawan, I'm surprised," he said.  "That's the first 
thing you've said showing the *slightest* fragment of intellect all 
day."
	"If you know what the singularity is, perhaps you might wish to 
end the suspense," Milarca said sharply.
	"Oh, I couldn't do that-- I wouldn't want to deny you the pleasure 
of solving the problem yourselves.  But if you're looking for hints, I 
think I could drop a few.  For instance, Dr. Milarca, did it *ever* 
occur to you to look for emissions of nadion particles in coming up 
with your rather remarkable hypothesis?"
	Milarca narrowed her eyes at him.  "And exactly why would I want 
to do that?"
	Q sighed.  "I suppose I need to spell it out," he said.  He stood 
up and paced, aware of the fact that every eye was on him-- and, 
despite his show of exasperation, he was delighted with the fact.  "If 
you bothered to measure the intensity of nadion particles, you'd 
realize there are far too many of them for this singularity to 
*possibly* be connected to a parallel universe."
	Now Milarca was staring at him.  "How am I supposed to realize 
that?"  she asked, her voice sharp with anger and bewilderment.  "I'd 
never heard that nadion particles had *any* connection to alternate 
universes.  To my knowledge, the only thing nadion particles have 
anything to do with is the local gravitometric patterns."
	He had her now.  Q smiled sweetly.  "And did it never occur to you 
that *maybe*, just *maybe*, a singularity would cause a fairly sizable 
alteration in the local gravitometric patterns?"
	"Of course!"  she snapped.  "And the particle concentration 
reflects that."
	Dhawan said, "Look, we've all been over this.  The nadion particle 
concentration is a little on the low side, but perfectly within 
acceptable tolerance levels for a singularity of this intensity--"
	"Oh, *acceptable* tolerance.  Defined by who, may I ask?  Have you 
become the arbiters of what is acceptable for stellar phenomena?"  Q 
walked over to Dhawan and leaned on the back of her seat until she 
stood up to face him.  
	"Defined by patterns detected by empirical research," Dhawan 
snapped.
	"Ah.  Defined by the limitations of what data you've actually 
gotten to collect, and what you've bothered to correlate.  I see., That 
makes it *so* much clearer."  He was really enjoying himself.  He'd 
forgotten how much fun this could be.
	"Lucy, spit it out," Markow said.  "Obviously you think you're 
privy to some information we mere mortals don't share.  How about you 
do your job instead of putting on a show and *tell* us what we're 
missing?"
	"I am suitably chastised," Q said, and grinned.  "Very well.  
Since none of you have seen fit to correlate patterns of nadion 
radiation with known incidences of alter-gateways, I suppose I *will* 
have to spell it out in words of two syllables or less."  He was now 
standing at the head of the table, having totally usurped Dhawan's 
position there.  He leaned forward, as if imparting a secret of great 
import to the gathering.  "At the boundaries between what you call 
parallel universes, all gravitational forces are annihilated.  This 
naturally doesn't affect the concentration of gravitons visibly, since 
there's so many of the things around a singularity that you can't 
detect the distinction with your feeble instruments.  But you *can* 
detect the decrease in nadion particles caused by their annihilation at 
the boundary.  Apparently it simply never occurred to you to look for 
such an effect, but I assure you, it is there.  And *that*, Dr. 
Milarca, completely shoots your theory down, I'm afraid.  The nadion 
concentrations are characteristic of a singularity that is *not* 
associated with a parallel universe boundary."
	"And is there any proof of this, other than your word for it?"  
Milarca asked evenly.
	"Oh, I'm so glad you asked that.  Computer!  Access the Federation 
Physics Institute's records for all studies of singularities, 
wormholes, and other major temporal/spatial disturbances.  Display 
nadion particle emissions, graviton emissions, and conclusions as to 
the causes of each event."
	"The requested operation will take three point five minutes to 
complete," the computer informed him.
	"Peachy.  Do it anyway."
	"Why does that happen?"  Sovaz asked.
	Q spun.  "Excuse me?"
	"Why is gravity annihilated at the boundaries between universes?"
	"Sovaz, he hasn't even proven that it *is*, and you're asking him 
*why* it is?"  Dhawan asked,  
	"Q has considerably more expertise in these matters than we do," 
Sovaz said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.  "And I 
do not think that he would lie."
	"Why not?"  Dhawan asked sharply.  "Considering his past history--
"
	"No," Anne Christian said.  "Q isn't likely to lie about something 
this trivial.  He'll reserve his lies for when he can cause maximum 
pain."
	"Anne, you seem utterly fixated on this notion of me as a ruthless 
villain.  I'm beginning to think you don't love me."
	"I wonder if the Federation Council's pardon would protect you 
from a lawsuit for wrongful death?"  Christian murmured.
	Q ignored her.  It was an empty threat, more or less-- even if she 
sued him for her son's death and won, he was valuable enough that the 
Federation would pay the damages for him.  "Considering my past 
history, Commander Dhawan, I would be utterly foolish to lie to you.  
Let's not forget that I have no pet theories to endorse or sacred cows 
to hold inviolable.  I *know* what the fundamental structure of the 
universe is-- and the Federation is paying me a great deal to explain 
it to limited creatures like you.  I am hardly short-sighted enough to 
jeopardize my meal ticket, my dear.  Give me *some* credit."
	"Is artificial gravitation affected by the boundary crossing?"  
Sovaz asked.  "For instance, if someone were to fly into a singularity 
that *did* lead to an alternate universe, would the artificial gravity 
fail during the passage?"
	At this point the information Q had requested appeared on the 
holographic display in the middle of the table.  "Yes and no," Q said 
to Sovaz, and then turned his attention to the display, jabbing his 
fingers into it and calling for the computer to recalculate various 
figures.  In his best lecturing mode, he demonstrated that the 
concentration of nadion particles was invariably at least .3% lower 
near a singularity associated with another universe.
	When he was done, Milarca nodded simply.  "Very well.  I will bow 
to the evidence.  But I'm not yet convinced that Dr. Markow's theory is 
correct, either.  Does this gravitational annihilation effect take 
place when time travel occurs as well?"
	"No.  There's a warping effect, which alters the *frequency* of 
the nadions, but your equipment isn't sensitive enough to detect that."
	"Lucy, if you know what's causing the singularity, stop beating 
around the bush and tell us," Markow said.
	Q made a face.  "Unfortunately, I'm limited by your inferior 
equipment.  I can't directly sense what's causing the anomaly; all I 
can tell you right now is what's *not* causing it.  Of course, I've 
also only had a day to think about it.  Give me a few days."
	"No brilliant theories?"
	"I'd hardly wish to prejudice you, Daedalus.  No, I'll leave the 
brilliant theories to you for the moment."
	A man named Blumenthal said, "But look, what if we're looking at 
this all the wrong way?  It's just occurred to me--"
	Having had his moment in the sun, Q yielded the stage with more 
grace than he'd thought he'd be able to manage, and let Blumenthal 
expound on his silly theory.  He dropped an occasional scathing comment 
into the gathering, but ignored the proceedings for the most part, 
concentrating on collecting the information he needed to disprove 
Markow.