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/startrek 
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. 
             *                   *                    *   

	T'Laren had not been this exhausted in what seemed like years, and 
probably was.  She had had to sleep rather than meditating last night, 
since Q had kept her up so late, but felt as if she had done neither-- 
her body was sluggish, almost as if she'd been drugged, and her head 
pounded.  Not a good sign.  She was not getting enough rest, or perhaps 
her body, tantalized by true dreaming, was starting to rebel against 
the regimen of meditation she had placed herself on.  Even Vulcans 
needed to dream sometime, she had once told Soram.  It was still true, 
but she was desperately hoping that "sometime"  was not anytime soon.
	She worked out a bit, stretching, trying to wake herself up.  
There was still planning to do for Q's hearing, which was in the middle 
of the afternoon.  Which meant she would have to discuss it with him.
	Q was hardly amenable to waking up, let alone getting ready for 
his hearing.  There was no way he could go to the conference today, 
either, but at least people would put that down to him having to 
prepare, not oversleeping.  T'Laren was fairly certain no one else was 
as cavalier about showing up as Q was.  Admittedly, he had no 
scientific reputation to be threatened, but it was rude nonetheless.  
	Since he stubbornly refused to get up, T'Laren brought a coffee 
cup to his bedside and then proceeded to strip the bed.  Q glared at 
her, but got the hint and sat up before she pulled the last sheet off 
him, gulping the coffee... she had learned back on Ketaya that he 
preferred coffee cool enough to gulp when he was really tired, and 
would only get a hot cup after he already had some caffeine in his 
system.  Caffeine was another thing she'd have to wean him off-- six 
cups of double-strength coffee in a day were a bad idea-- but one thing 
at a time.
	She spent the rest of the day coaching him, trying to prepare him 
for the hearing by running practice question and answer sessions.  At 
first Q seemed incapable of taking her seriously, and treated the whole 
thing like an elaborate game.  As time went on, though, he got into it, 
until by the time of the actual hearing T'Laren felt reasonably 
confident he would not throw his future away for a witty remark.  Or at 
least, as confident as one could ever be, with Q.
	
	The hearing was a relatively informal thing, with Captain Okita 
presiding.  Dr. LeBeau had shown up in her crispest professional 
attire, a mistake in T'Laren's opinion-- she should have portrayed 
herself as a weak innocent, not a competent, professional adult.  
	Q seemed to have taken T'Laren's coaching to heart-- he was 
sitting straight up, not lounging back in the chair as he usually did, 
and his expression was solemn.  Either he was going to be fine, or he 
was going to do something spectacularly disastrous.  It was hard to 
tell at this point which.  
	LeBeau's version of the story went first.  She confessed to having 
had "a bit too much", and so when she went over to talk to Q, she 
granted that perhaps he might have misinterpreted her intent.  "But he 
was vicious.  He insulted me terribly in the course of our discussion, 
and finally said things no lady should have to hear.  I was a little 
bit inebriated, as I said, and not in the best control of myself, so I 
slapped him.  And that was wrong, I know it.  I shouldn't have let my 
temper get away from me like that.  But he *broke* my *arm!*"  Her 
voice rose.  "This man claims violence is barbaric and beneath him-- 
how does he explain a violent overreaction like that?  I wouldn't have 
expected that from a *Klingon*, and here is a member of a* supposedly 
*advanced species assaulting people half his size."
	Then they asked for Q's statement.  Q stood up, seeming 
uncharacteristically subdued.  "I'd like to say first of all that I 
deeply regret the injury to Dr. LeBeau," he said quietly.  "I was 
trying to defend myself, but I never intended to injure her."
	"Defend yourself from what, exactly?"  Okita prompted.
	This was the opening Q needed, and T'Laren saw him become more 
animated.  "I was eating dinner with Dr. Roth, having a quiet 
discussion, when Dr. LeBeau came over and accosted me.  She was more 
than a little inebriated, and though we offered to take her home 
several times, she refused.  She insulted me in thoroughly vicious and 
unprovoked fashion-- I hadn't even *talked* to her that night, yet she 
felt the need to attack my competence, call me a murderer, and make 
wholly unsupported allegations about my sex life."  He shrugged, with a 
bit of a self-deprecating smile.  "I've never been one to slink away 
from a good verbal battle-- I rather enjoy them at times, in fact.  So 
I defended myself, quite wittily I might add.  But I *never* expected 
her to escalate to physical violence."  He looked directly at Okita 
with his best sincere expression, focused and totally devoid of humor.  
"My people have a long tradition of verbal combat, longer probably than 
your species has existed.  But we believe firmly that the response to 
words should be more words.  We would *never* think of attacking 
someone for their speech-- on the few occasions, once in a hundred 
millennia, when one Q has physically attacked another, it's *always* 
been due to observable, harmful actions, *never *for words."  He looked 
down again.  "I suppose you could call me a slow learner, then, 
shortsighted, what have you... I've been physically assaulted for words 
a dozen times, some of them *by* humans... once I was even almost 
killed by the humans who were supposed to be protecting me.  But the 
barbarism of physical violence still comes as a surprise to me.  
*Certainly* I don't expect it from a scientist, someone who is honored 
and respected for having higher faculties of mind than the normal run 
of your species."
	"What exactly took place, Q?"
	"Well, after our verbal combat had continued for some minutes, Dr. 
LeBeau made one of her wildly inaccurate suppositions about my sexual 
habits, as I mentioned.  I retorted that her inordinate interest in my 
sex life was unwarranted, as I personally did not find her attractive 
in the slightest.  For some reason, this pushed her over the line of 
rationality, and she hit me in the face, preparing to beat me up, I 
suppose."  Q shuddered dramatically.  "I've been beaten up before, as I 
said-- humans, Rigellians, Markasoids, and once a pair of Bajoran women 
nearly killed me in a bar on Starbase 56, for some sort of slight to 
their religion."  T'Laren had specifically coached him to mention that 
incident in particular, since Bajoran women were no stronger or larger 
than human women, and it would reinforce the notion that Q had 
seriously feared LeBeau hurting him.  "Dr. T'Laren's been training me 
in self-defense-- and I had no desire to be beaten up again.  So I 
grabbed Dr. LeBeau's arm and pulled it away, so she couldn't hit me 
again-- and by accident, I broke her arm while doing so.  And for 
inflicting that injury, I *am* sorry, but I won't apologize for 
defending myself from an unprovoked physical assault."
	"Unprovoked physical *assault*?"  LeBeau asked.  "I slapped you!"
	"Exactly."
	"But I'm half your size!  I couldn't have hurt you if I wanted 
to!"
	"Let's have some order here," Okita said mildly, but with a steely 
core to his voice.  "Q, did you take into account your 'assailant's' 
physical size and strength in comparison to your own?"
	"Why would I?"  Q asked.  "On paper, I suppose I'm physically 
stronger than most of the people who've assaulted me in the past."  He 
glanced at LeBeau.  "Physical strength has very little to do with it.  
Your people seem to think that it's acceptable to attack someone 
physically for a non-physical provocation that is entirely equivalent 
to the provocation that preceded it.  What I said to LeBeau was no 
worse than what she said to me, but somehow she thought she had the 
right to hit me in the head for it.  My head is arguably one of the 
more valuable items in the Federation, certainly the most valuable 
thing I own-- even the slightest damage to my brain could compromise my 
ability to do my job, and if I can't do that the Federation would have 
no reason to continue to protect me from my old enemies.  An attempt to 
damage me there is nothing short of an attempt to kill me.  And yet Dr. 
LeBeau believes that it was not only acceptable for her to hit me in 
the head, possibly causing concussive brain damage, but that she could 
hit me in the *face*-- the most vulnerable and pain-sensitive portion 
of my head, causing me maximum pain and possibly facial scarring or 
blinding-- not only was this perfectly normal and acceptable for her to 
do, but that I was entirely outside the pale to defend myself from this 
assault."
	T'Laren was proud of him.  He hadn't whined or been self-pitying, 
and yet he had made it perfectly clear in a short period of time that 
he had had excellent reasons to fear LeBeau's attack, while painting 
himself as a morally superior alien who would never attack someone 
unprovoked and casting aspersions on any human who wrote off LeBeau's 
slapping him as minor.  Phrasing the slap as "hitting him in the head"  
had been Q's own idea, and T'Laren had agreed to it-- once you got him 
going on the topic, Q could be quite inventive with verbal manipulation 
of any kind.
	"Concussive brain damage?  Facial scarring?  You're making 
mountains out of molehills," LeBeau accused.  "There's no way the slap 
I gave you would have damaged you."
	"And how was I supposed to know that?"  Q retorted.  "For that 
matter, given that every *other* time someone has hit me they proceeded 
to inflict grievous bodily harm, how was I supposed to know that that 
single blow was all you intended?"
	"Order, please," Okita said, and everyone shut up, even Q.
	T'Laren decided that Q had set the stage properly.  "I'd like to 
speak on my client's behalf, if I may."
	"Go ahead."
	T'Laren stood.  "Human beings, after approximately 8-12 years of 
development, acquire an exquisite sense of their own bodies, of the 
problems and possibilities these bodies present.  An adult human has 
learned roughly how hard he can be hit before damage occurs, and what 
force he needs to apply to defend himself.  We take it for granted that 
this is true of all adults, that it comes with maturity.  It does not.  
It comes with experience.  And Q has had only three years of experience 
with the human form.
	"In that time, Q has never experienced a slap.  He has been 
beaten, frequently and brutally, occasionally to the point of near-
death.  His life has been threatened on numerous occasions.  And until 
recently, he has never had the vaguest idea of how to stop this from 
happening.
	"I began training Q in self-defense.  I taught him to disable an 
attacker quickly and efficiently, since my assumption, based on Q's 
experience and the logic of his situation, was that in the great 
majority of cases, Q's assailants would intend to kill him or cause 
extreme harm."  She glanced at LeBeau.  "I fear I did not consider the 
basic irrationality of humans; as Q primarily works with Starfleet and 
scientists, people who I'd assumed would be able to control their 
irrational impulses, I did not train him to deal with an attacker who 
was compulsively acting out a ritual, as Dr. LeBeau was."
	"Explain 'compulsively acting out a ritual.'"
	"By that, I meant, in essence, a subconscious compulsion to enact 
a ritual which states, in essence, that Dr. LeBeau is a subordinate 
minor in need of protection from predatory males, in this case Q.  This 
ritual originates from a time when all women were considered to be 
subordinate and lacking in adult competence, and were thought to need 
protection.  When a man violated a woman's honor, by impugning her 
sexual value, it was acceptable for her to slap him, and he was 
expected not to retaliate because it would be beneath him to attack a 
mere female."
	Dr. LeBeau had turned bright red.  "That isn't what I meant by it 
at all!  I--"
	"You are not on trial, Dr. LeBeau," T'Laren assured her.  "Q is.  
I merely explained the origins of the custom you enacted to illustrate 
my point, namely that I did not expect the people Q works with to 
engage in such illogical behavior.  That is my failing."
	Her demeanor was calm, cool, the perfect Vulcan.  She showed no 
outward signs of the glee she felt at tearing LeBeau to shreds under 
the guise of being "logical".  Any woman who would slap a man for 
calling her ugly when she'd just called him lousy in bed was, in 
T'Laren's mind, a primitive throwback and deserved what she got.  There 
were definite advantages to being Vulcan sometimes.  Now if Q would 
only keep his mouth shut and not try to pick up where T'Laren left 
off...
	A miracle occurred, and he did keep his mouth shut.  He looked at 
T'Laren with an expression that might have been astonishment, 
admiration or both, so apparently he had perceived what she had just 
done.
	Okita's verdict, handed down after minimal deliberation, was 
simple.  Q was not guilty of assault; it was an accident caused by an 
act of self-defense.  Dr. LeBeau was required to take a class on 
sensitivity to other cultural mores in dealing with aliens, and Q was 
required to take a class on non-violent self-defense, both classes to 
be taken within the next six months.  Slaps on the wrist all around, 
but Q didn't see it that way.
	"*I* have to take a class?"  He had at least managed to keep his 
mouth shut until they left, so it was only T'Laren he was complaining 
to, as they walked down the hall back to their quarters.  "Trying to do 
self-defense is what got me *into* this mess."
	"What got you into this mess was doing it poorly," T'Laren pointed 
out.  "If you'd known what you were doing, you could have stopped her 
without hurting her."
	"I doubt it."
	"I think we should resume your lessons.  Knowing a little bit 
about something is more dangerous than either complete ignorance or 
thorough knowledge."
	"And how long will it take to acquire this mythical 'thorough 
knowledge'?"  Q asked bitterly.  "Three weeks under your oh-so-tender 
tutelage, and this was the result.  How many weeks will it take before 
it's actually of use to me?"
	"What happened the other night seems to indicate that it's of 
*use* to you right now," T'Laren pointed out.  "What went wrong was not 
with your technique, which was quite effective at disabling your 
attacker.  You misjudged the threat that Dr. LeBeau represented.  If 
she really *had* been the threat you thought she was, you would have 
defended yourself effectively."  She looked at him.  "You know, now 
that I think about it, you need scenario training even more than self-
defense training.  I don't know why I didn't think of this before."
	"Scenario training?"
	"A form of training to understand social situations in an alien 
culture.  I think we both know there is something wrong with the way 
I've been behaving toward you, and I think I've just realized what.  I 
have simultaneously taken on a role as your teacher and your therapist.  
And you require both, desperately--"
	"Thank you *so* much.  I'm far from *desperate*, T'Laren."
	She shrugged slightly.  The statement would stand on its own; she 
didn't need to argue the point with him.  "The trouble is that the two 
roles are incompatible.  As your teacher, I should point out to you 
when you are doing something wrong, and take an active role in showing 
you what you need to do.  As your therapist, though, my role should be 
mostly passive, not attempting to direct your behavior, except in the 
sense that I should try to help *you* see why your current behavior 
isn't getting you what you want.  For instance, the night LeBeau 
attacked you, when I tried to demonstrate to you that you should not 
insult people when you're asking them for a favor... as your teacher, 
that was appropriate.  But as your therapist, that was out of line.  
You should be able to believe you can say anything to me, and I won't 
retaliate."
	"So you admit you were retaliating, then?"  Q asked, a gleam in 
his eyes.  T'Laren shook her head.
	"No, but you believed I was.  In that sense, your perception was 
more important than the reality.  So what I'm thinking we should do, 
rather than have me try to correct your behavior as it occurs, is for 
us to take you through scenario training.  You and I will go to one of 
the holodecks, and we'll run simulations of some standard social 
situations.  I'll be there to explain when things go wrong and how to 
correct them.  In a safe environment like the holodeck, where your 
mistakes will have no real social consequences, you may be able to 
learn without the kind of pressures that are on you in daily life."
	"What is this fetish you have for holodecks?  You won't be happy 
until you drag me into one, will you?"
	"Why do you have such problems with them?"  T'Laren countered.  
	"I don't see the point to trying to live in a fantasy world.  
What's the point to interacting with people that don't exist?  All they 
can do is what you programmed them to do."
	"Well, if you're using the holodeck for fantasy purposes, I always 
found it most interesting to interact with actual people.  But then, I 
can tell whether a person in a holodeck is real or not.  In this case, 
though, the whole idea is to learn how to interact with people that 
*do* exist."  She glanced over at him.  He was probably being sullen 
because he thought she was telling him what to do.  "It's actually a 
required course for non-humans at Starfleet Academy.  I've taken it 
before.  If you fear you might do something embarrassing, you have to 
realize I have seen a classful of young Vulcans who had never been off 
their homeworld take the scenarios.  There's *nothing* you could do as 
bad as what they did."
	"You said you *took* the class?  Not taught it?"
	"I was a cadet at the time; they'd hardly be having me teach a 
class."  This was begging the question; she'd tutored it after she had 
sailed through all the scenarios on the first or second try.  
	Q looked at her.  "But you were raised by humans.  Why *ever* 
would they force you to take such an absurdly unnecessary class?"
	T'Laren hoped Q could not see the tips of her ears turning green 
with embarrassment.  "I.. didn't try to get out of it.  My math scores 
were too low that semester... I needed the grade."
	A look of astonished amusement began to break over Q's face.  "You 
mean, you deliberately allowed yourself to be assigned to a class that 
you *knew* would be ridiculously easy for you?"
	"I suppose... yes, you could say that."
	"You cheated!"  Q crowed delightedly.
	"I did not cheat," T'Laren retorted, still embarrassed.  A bit of 
the funny side began to show itself to her, and she allowed herself the 
sort of utterly deadpan expression she used when she was being 
humorous.  "It would hardly have been ethical of me to try to get out 
of a Starfleet requirement that my fellows were bound to, simply 
because of my background."
	"You cheated," Q repeated, still delighted.  "My *dear* T'Laren.  
I'm beginning to think there's some hope for you."
	"Well, it wasn't quite as much as that.  They tracked us based on 
species and likelihood of interacting with humans.  My family come from 
the Shi'Kahr region, the most cosmopolitan area of Vulcan, and my 
mother *was* a Starfleet officer, so they had me in the most 
challenging section."  She turned to him.  "They curve the grades, you 
see, based on the grades of the others in the class.  So they did try 
to put everyone in a class based on estimated skill level."
	"But they somehow overlooked the fact that you had spent your 
formative years on Earth."
	"I'd put my natural parents' names down on my application to 
Starfleet, and the next of kin I listed were all Vulcan.  They *did* 
have the information on my entrance essay, but not on the abbreviated 
version of my records, so I suppose the professors didn't know."
	"Did they find out?"
	"Of course not.  They were a bit stunned by my command of Terran 
idioms, but took a point or two off for inappropriate idioms when I 
used terms native to my home... we used some very colorful local 
expressions in Texas, and I actually had no idea that no one outside 
the area knew what they meant."
	"This just gets better and better."
	"Well, it was only fair," T'Laren said defensively.  "I was 
tracked in with other Vulcans in my math and hard science courses, too.  
Vulcan superiority at math and physics isn't inborn--  it's something 
that comes as part of the disciplines.  And well, you know how skilled 
I am at them..."
	"Oh, of course," Q said solemnly.  "Certainly, it was only fair."  
A grin broke out.  "So did your classmates lynch you before or after 
the final exam?"
	"My classmates were Vulcans," T'Laren retorted, "and Vulcans 
appreciate excellence.  They did not 'lynch' me at all."  She 
considered.  "Though considering what I did to the curve, they probably 
would have refused to speak to me for the rest of the schoolyear if 
*they'd* known I'd grown up on Earth."
	Q laughed.  "Such potential, at such a tender age.  We may make a 
trickster out of you yet."
	"It was never my ambition to be a trickster," T'Laren pointed out.
	"Then why did you name your ship Ketaya?"
	"A ketaya isn't merely a trickster; it's also a symbol for death 
and rebirth.  And besides, the ship would eventually be a place for 
*you* as well."
	"Ah."  Q nodded.  "So.  What other intriguing little bits of your 
past haven't you told me?"
	"Most of them," T'Laren said blandly.  Was this going to be 
another one of his attempts to manipulate her into telling him things 
she didn't want to talk about?  She got enough of that from Tris.  "So 
what do you think?  Does the scenario training sound like a good idea?"
	"Do I have a choice?"
	"Certainly.  We can go practice self-defense instead.  You *are* 
losing what ground you gained."
	Q gave her a dirty look.  "This is blackmail, you know."
			*				*				*
	He felt exceedingly stupid.
	The holodeck scenario was a bar; he recognized it by the dimness 
and the fact that an inordinate number of patrons were sitting on 
stools in front of a counter instead of at the more civilized tables.  
Q had been feeling mostly good from his victory over LeBeau, though the 
notion that he had to take a class still rankled; and T'Laren's 
admission that she'd cheated at the Academy to improve her grade point 
average had delighted him.  But now he was feeling tense again.  This 
was a bar, and Q did not do well in bars.
	T'Laren had assured him that the holodeck had safety interlocks.  
The patrons would not really beat him up.  Nonetheless, he was nervous.
	A woman approached him in an outrageously scanty costume, annoying 
Q considerably.  His health had improved over the past few weeks, and 
in the past few days he had noted the return of one of the more 
unpleasant side effects of good health.  The woman was aesthetically 
pleasing enough, although she wore too much makeup and her face had a 
bit of a frowzy look to it that the makeup was trying to conceal.  She 
was, in addition to being even less real than the simulacrum-sentients 
he used to invent to populate his scenarios, not the sort of person who 
would have intrigued him in real life-- this was the kind of woman that 
hormonally overloaded men like Riker, for instance, spent time with.  
Once upon a time Q had found the antics of such women, and the men they 
hoodwinked, greatly amusing.  Now he resented them furiously, since his 
body seemed to be unaware that he, as a superior being, should not be 
affected by a gratuitous display of flesh.  
	"Hello, stranger," the woman said in a sultry voice.  "Buy a lady 
a drink?"
	"If I saw a lady to buy a drink for, I *might* contemplate it," Q 
retorted.
	The woman hmmphed and flounced off.  "Freeze program," T'Laren 
said.
	Q turned to her.  "What was that for?"
	"Congratulations," T'Laren said dryly.  "You've just made a new 
record.  I didn't think it was possible to fail the scenario in the 
first line of dialogue."
	"What are you talking about?"
	"I told you that the object of the scenario is to get information 
about the location of Jason Jones.  You need the prostitute's help for 
that.  The Vulcan students all turned down the prostitute, too, but 
they were far less rude about it.  You've just ensured that she will be 
unwilling to help you later in the scenario."
	"How do you know?"  Q challenged.  "Maybe I can find another way 
around it.  Or bribe her.  She must be fairly venal if she sells her 
body for money."
	"Very well.  Why don't we try?"
	An hour, several mortally insulted holograms, and a great deal of 
frustration later, Q came to the conclusion that T'Laren had been right 
the first time.  You couldn't solve the scenario without the 
prostitute's help, and she was entirely unwilling to help him.  Any of 
the characters who might have been persuaded to help him out in her 
place had also been offended by something he said, or did.  "This is an 
incredibly stupid scenario.  People are not nearly this quick to take 
offense."
	"People who know you have undoubtedly developed thicker skins to 
compensate," T'Laren replied.  "People who want something from you will 
try to make allowances.  These people--"
	"These *characters*, T'Laren.  They're not self-aware."
	"These characters, then, don't know you.  You aren't the great Q, 
oracle of Starbase 56, to them; you're just some random human off the 
latest ship."
	He stared at her.  "You can't be serious.  You mean people are 
actually treating me *better* than they otherwise would?"
	"Q, if it weren't for your value to the Federation, you would 
probably have died a long time ago.  And not from an old enemy, either, 
but from a new one.  Either that, or you would be stuck in a despicable 
dead-end job because you'd have offended the people who held your 
future in their hands."
	That couldn't be true.  People treated him terribly back on 
Starbase 56... "But people aren't offended by me here.  And they 
haven't met me before."
	"Your reputation precedes you.  And you *are* valuable to the 
Federation.  People of value are expected to be more arrogant than 
people who are not."
	Q scowled.  He was not going to be beaten by a stupid computer 
program.  "Computer, restart program."
	The bar reappeared, and the prostitute sauntered up to him.  
"Hello, stranger.  Buy a lady a drink?"
	"Not tonight, thanks.  I have a headache."
	Apparently she accepted that absurd reply as inoffensive, smiling 
at him.  "Well, if you change your mind, come on over to the bar and 
ask for Cilla.  All right, honey?"  She didn't wait for an answer to 
that, which was good, as Q was deeply offended at being called "honey", 
even by a computer program.  He glared at T'Laren, who was wearing the 
sort of perfectly deadpan expression that meant she was probably 
snickering hysterically inside.
	An hour and a half later, Q had managed to get further through the 
scenario before reaching a dead end, but hadn't managed to complete it.  
"This is *unbelievably* stupid.  How can these people be so obstinate?  
How can *anyone* solve this?"
	"People do," T'Laren said.  "Though it took one young man of my 
acquaintance seventeen tries.  The trouble is that you are assuming 
these people *must* help you, that they are obligated to.  They are 
not.  You're asking them for favors and offering nothing in return--"
	"I *tried* bribery."
	"Rather clumsily, though.  Simply saying, 'Will you tell me if I 
give you money?' is embarrassingly blunt to most people, who would 
prefer to believe that they are doing you a favor and you're doing one 
in return, not that this is a crass commercial transaction.  These are 
humans, remember.  Not Ferengi."
	"I didn't know humans still *were* prostitutes anymore."
	"In certain areas of Earth, yes.  When they choose to be."
	The notion that he could be beaten by a test someone else set for 
him, a test a bunch of Vulcans with no experience at *all* of human 
beings, let alone the millennia he spent studying them, were able to 
pass, galled him.  Q's eyes narrowed.  "Reset program."
	He tried three times more, getting closer each time, but more and 
more frustrated.  Finally, in total frustration, he decided to go ahead 
and buy the prostitute a drink.  Maybe he'd be able to get information 
from her if he plied her with synthehol first.
	As he sat down with her at the bar, he leaned forward.  "Tell me 
what you know about Jason Jones,"  he said.  He was beginning to hate 
that name.  Why couldn't they have named the plot macguffin something 
interesting, like Isaiah Takamura or something?  
	"What do you want to know about *him* for, sugar?"  the woman 
crooned.  "I'm right here."
	She put her hand on his leg.
	Q knew a moment of instant and total panic.  She was going to do 
something to him.  Like Amy Frasier had, and his body would betray him, 
would cooperate with her in usurping his will.  People rarely touched 
him-- before T'Laren, no one ever had, except to administer a hypo or 
drag him off to house arrest-- and *no* one but Amy Frasier had ever 
touched him there.  It should have been innocuous-- it was on the side 
of his leg, not the inner surface, halfway between the knee and the 
groin.  But his body didn't seem to think it was innocuous, and neither 
did he.  A jolt of something went through him, like an electric shock 
where she touched him, and for a terrified moment he simply couldn't 
move at all.  Then he jerked backward with such force that he fell off 
the chair.
	"Computer, cushion!"  T'Laren shouted.
	He fell into some thick, soft surface.  The prostitute character 
was leaning over him with a false expression of concern.  "What's 
wrong, honey?  You all right?"
	"Don't touch me!"  Q gasped hoarsely, the panic consuming him.  
One touch.  One touch was all it had been, and now his body was 
burning, aching in a way he found more humiliating than almost any 
other discomfort.  She might touch him again, and his body might take 
over his will, as it had with Amy when he hadn't been able to push her 
away, had barely been able to choke out a refusal.  And this time his 
body might not let him refuse.  
	"Computer, end program!"  T'Laren said.
	And suddenly he was sitting on the floor, not a soft cushion at 
all, shaking almost uncontrollably.  "What happened?"  T'Laren asked, 
running over to him-- she had been standing in the back of the room, 
watching without interfering, until this.  
	It would sound so stupid, such a juvenile, ridiculous fear, that Q 
didn't want to tell her.  But he did.  Talking to T'Laren was a habit, 
and he wanted... something, he wasn't sure what.  Maybe reassurance, or 
validation, or a logical explanation of his fears, so he could have 
something to justify them to himself with.  "She... touched me,"  he 
managed to say, suffering from dire humiliation, still trembling, 
barely able to say it.
	"On the leg, you mean?"
	Q nodded.
	"I'm so sorry."  T'Laren knelt next to him.  "I had no idea it was 
this bad for you; I should never have given you this scenario."
	"No, you shouldn't have,"  Q agreed, glad she was giving him a 
target to blame besides himself.  This was ridiculous.  He was still 
shaking, and over what?  He had been beaten near to death, had suffered 
assassination attempts too horrid to remember, and here he was, shaking 
because a hologram had touched him on the leg.  What had he been afraid 
of?  She was a *hologram*, as much under his power as all mortals had 
once been, almost as much as the simulacra he himself had created had 
been.  He could have just deleted her if he didn't like what she was 
doing, as he might have disintegrated a simulacrum or banished a mortal 
to oblivion.  
	But he had been afraid because... he had wanted it.  Every fiber 
of his treacherous body had yearned toward that simple touch, had 
wanted the hologram to keep going, had wanted to beg for more.  All it 
took was such a little thing, and he was reduced to the needs of his 
body, his higher faculties and the disgust he felt falling by the 
wayside.  She was a nonsentient *thing*, for the sake of all, and he 
had wanted her to touch him, to... to do things that had absolutely 
nothing to do with the higher faculties of intellect or even of 
emotion, except the most base brute need.
	"I want to go home," he said, and cringed at how plaintive his 
voice sounded.
	"Of course.  We'll go back right now."  She offered her hand to 
help him up, but Q didn't take it.  He hadn't sunk *that* low.  And 
besides, he feared what might happen if she touched him now, in the 
state he was in.  He certainly didn't want to think of T'Laren *that* 
way.  There would be no escape; he couldn't avoid her.  
	Back in the room, T'Laren asked him, "Do you want to talk about 
it?"
	"No,"  Q said flatly.  Talking about it was the *last* thing he 
wanted to do.  Of course, it was going to take a miracle to make 
T'Laren see that; she never left him alone on things like this.  "I'm 
going to bed."
	"All right,"  she said.  "But remember.  If you do decide you want 
to talk about it, you can always talk to me."
	Q looked at her, startled.  She almost looked sincere.  Where was 
the cajoling, the wheedling information out of him?
	He wasn't going to question it.  Before she could change her mind 
and start trying to worm it out of him, he ducked into the room.  He 
was only overtired, that was all.  It had been a strenuous day, and 
even though it was relatively early for him, he wasn't fully recovered.  
That was all it was.  Surely he wouldn't have responded like that to a 
*hologram* if he hadn't been exhausted.
			*				*				*