by Greg Cox
“About time you thought of me,” his sometime girlfriend and future wife replied indignantly, flashing onto the scene. She stood just out of reach, oriented along the same axis as Q, so that he found himself staring directly into her kneecaps. “I was starting to wonder if I was going to cross your mind anytime before the heat death of the universe.”
Q somersaulted off his invisible trapeze, landing on his feet in front of Q. Arms crossed atop her chest, she fixed a pair of dubious eyes upon him. Her auburn tresses fell across her shoulders, less elegantly coifed than they would be aboard the Enterprise- E six hundred millennia from now, but the arch of her eyebrow was no less haughty.
Despite her forbidding expression and body language, Q was glad to see her. Where was the fun of embarking on a bold new adventure if there was no one around to show off for? 0 and his pals didn’t count; they were part of the experiment, and too experienced in this kind of thing to be either impressed or shocked by Q’s role in the proceedings. I need an audience, he decided, and he couldn’t think of anyone better than Q.
“Well?” she demanded, her face as frozen as absolute zero.
Apologies were only embarrassing, he decided. Better to simply brazen this one out. “Q! Great to see you! Come to join the fun?”
“Hardly,” she said scornfully, shaking her head.
“Say, who have we here?” 0 called out. In a blink, he joined them on the opposite side of the game board. The projected scenes of volcanic havoc disappeared from view. “Aren’t you going to introduce me to your fine female friend, Q?”
“Oh, right,” Q muttered, slightly discomfited by the reality of having to deal with both 0 and Q at the same time. They each came from completely different slices of his existence, engaged separate aspects of his personality. It was like trying to be two different people at once. “0, this is Q. Q, this is 0. He’s not from around here.”
“So I hear,” she said icily, regarding the stranger with all the warmth and affection she might lavish on a Markoffian sea lizard before turning her back on him. “I need to talk to you, Q…alone.”
0’s face darkened ominously at the female Q’s not terribly subtle snub, reminding Q a little too much of how he had looked right before he flash-freezed the Coulalakritous. Then 0 saw Q watching him, and his expression lightened, assuming a more amiable mien. “Of course,” he agreed readily. “Far be it from me to intrude upon such a charming young couple. The last thing you two need is a crusty old chaperon such as myself. If you’ll excuse me, m’dear, I’ll be stepping out for a while.” Tipping his head at the female, he opened a doorway into another continuum, then stepped halfway through. “Don’t be all day, Q,” he warned, lingering for a moment between dimensions. He cast a glance at the expanse of the Tkon Empire as it waited beneath their feet. “The best is still to come. Mark my words, you haven’t seen anything yet.”
The doorway closed behind him, disappearing along with 0. I wonder what he has in mind, Q thought, intrigued by his new friend’s cryptic promises. More apocalyptic destruction, or something more interesting? He looked forward to finding out.
His significant other didn’t seem curious at all. “Finally,” she huffed. “I thought he’d never leave.” She surveyed the game board skeptically, as if she half-expected to find 0’s muddy footprints all over the unsuspecting empire. “All right, Q, what’s this all about?”
“Er, what do you think it’s all about?” Not the most brilliant retort he had ever come up with, but perhaps it might buy him enough time to think of something more clever. How best to present the situation to her anyway, and precisely what sort of reaction did he hope to elicit? It was hard to say, especially when he had mixed feelings himself about what The One and his associates were doing to the Tkon.
“Don’t get coy with me, Q,” she warned. “The Q told me all about the disreputable gypsy vagabonds you’ve been hanging around with. Really, Q, I thought you had better taste than to fraternize with entities so…parvenu.”
Ordinarily, he found her impeccable snobbishness delightfully high-handed, but not when it was turned against him. Who was she to pick out his friends for him, as if he lacked the judgment and maturity to choose his own company? It was insulting, really. “You don’t know anything about them,” he said defensively, “and neither do the Q. I’ll have you know that 0 and the others bring a fresh new perspective to this part of the multiverse. I may not agree with everything they’re about, but I would certainly never dismiss their ideas out of hand simply because they’re not part of our own boring little clique. I have an open mind, unlike certain other Qs I might name.”
A pair of ivory opera glasses appeared in her hand, and she glanced down at the sprawling interstellar empire beneath them. As she inspected the goings-on there, she shared what she saw with Q. A montage of moving images unfurled before his eyes, all taken from the daily lives of the present generation of Tkon: battle-weary soldiers crawling through the trenches of some Q-forsaken tropical swamp, a hungry child wandering lost amid the rubble of an obliterated city, angry rioters shouting through a hastily erected forcefield at uniformed troops, priceless manuscripts and ancient tapestries hurled onto a bonfire by chanting zealots, a spy on trial for her life before a military tribunal, even an assassination attempt on the life of the empress.
“Is this what you call a fresh perspective, a bold new idea: making life miserable for a tribe of insignificant bipeds?” She snapped the lorgnette shut with a flick of her wrist, terminating the picture show. “It’s as tedious as it is tragic. Why don’t you just peel the scales off an Aldebaran serpent while you’re at it? Or pull the membrane off an amoeba?”
“At least they’re doing something,” Q pointed out, not entirely sure how he ended up defending 0’s mysterious agenda, but too irritated to care. “They take an interest in matters outside the rarefied atmosphere of your precious Continuum. True, this sort of hands-on approach can get a bit messy, but it’s no worse than the ghastly foolishness that developing species always inflict on themselves anyway. Remember those divers throwing themselves into the jaws of monsters back on Tagus? They turned themselves into fish food voluntarily, just for the sake of a primitive ritual, so what’s wrong with sacrificing a few million more to a good end? Their tiny lives are measured in micro-nano-aeons, after all.”
“Is that so?” she answered. “Who are you trying to convince, me or yourself?”
Good question, he thought, although he wasn’t about to admit it. “I don’t need to convince you of anything. I’m perfectly capable of making my own decisions.”
“Particularly when they’re the wrong ones…. Oh, don’t make that face at me. This is more important than your wounded male ego.” Her expression softened a tad as she tried one more time to get through to him. “Listen to me, Q. We’ve known each other ever since we’ve been able to manipulate matter and recite the pledge of omniscience at the same time. We learned how to parse the lesser atomic force together. Trust me when I say that I’m only looking out for your best interests here. Forget about this 0 character and his low-life confederates. I promise I won’t think any less of you if you come away with me now.”
“And then what?” Q asked, less heatedly than before. Although touched by her concern, he wasn’t ready to surrender just because she had started firing roses instead of ammo. “Am I supposed to just creep back to the Continuum with my hypothetical tail between my legs, to sit back meekly with folded hands while the great big universe goes by?” He struggled to make her understand. “Don’t you see? I can’t give up now. This is the first time I’ve ever taken a risk, done something with my immortality. I’m not a kid anymore. It’s high time I hold to my guns, stand by my mark, draw a line in the ether, and all that decisive stuff. Right or wrong, I have to see this through to the end, no matter what. It’s the only way I’ll ever find out who I really am.”
“But this isn’t about you,” she protested. “It’s about 0 and his crazy games. He’s just using you.”
“Maybe so,” Q agreed, “but he can’t take advantage of me without my cooperation. That’s my choice to make, so, you see, it really does come back to me.”
She sighed and shook her head sadly. “If you don’t know who you truly are, then you’re the only intelligence in the Continuum who doesn’t. You’re stubborn and unpredictable, Q. A volatile catalyst in the never-ending chemical reaction that is creation, the spice in the primordial soup. You have all the verve and vitality of the cosmos and not one iota of common sense.” She dropped her opera glasses into the glowing red sun at the center of the Tkon Empire and watched as they bubbled and melted away. “And I suppose that’s why I’m never going to be able to convince you to do the sane and rational thing and listen to me for once.”
“No,” Q confirmed, “although you wouldn’t be you if you didn’t keep trying now and then.” Beyond that, he wasn’t sure how to respond to her spontaneous description of him. I kind of like that bit about the spice, he thought, more than a little flattered, although I could have done without the commentary on my common sense, or lack thereof. “Thanks a lot, I guess.”
“Goodbye, Q,” she said before transporting away. “Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
Why should I, he reflected, when I know you’ll always be there to remind me?
Young Q gazed ruefully at the empty space that his highly significant other had occupied only milliseconds before, seemingly saddened by her departure. Theirs had been a bittersweet parting, at best. “Just wait,” he promised the starry blackness beside him. “We’ll look back at this and laugh someday.”
“Not to worry, lad,” a bombastic voice assured him. 0 materialized in the space the female had vacated. He looked much happier now that the distaff Q was gone. “She’ll come around eventually, see if she doesn’t.” He threw back his head and chuckled heartily. “Women! They’re the same in every reality. Why, the stories I could tell you!” He gave Q a solid punch in the shoulder that sent him stumbling sideways. “But I don’t need to teach a strapping young rooster like you about the fairer sex, do I? I imagine you’ve got a girl in every solar system or my name isn’t 0!”
Several meters away, unseen and unheard by either participant in this one-sided discussion, Jean-Luc Picard groaned aloud. “I can’t believe you actually fell for all this phony masculine camaraderie,” he told the Q standing beside him.
“Cut me some slack, mon capitaine,” he said. “I was barely seven billion years old. What did I know about the ways of extradimensional executioners?”
“Executioner?”
“Just watch the show, Jean-Luc,” Q advised sourly, “before I regret bringing you here in the first place.”
Twelve
Lem Faal felt like an ullafish fighting its way upstream. As he staggered down the seemingly endless corridors of the Enterprise in search of Engineering, pockets of uniformed crew members kept streaming past him on the way to sickbay, getting in his way. Idiots, he cursed. Didn’t they realize he had more important things to do than let them pass by in their pointless attempts to preserve their own insignificant existences? Immortality was within his grasp, but these blinkered Starfleet buffoons were doing their best to obstruct him, especially that pigheaded fool Commander Riker.
Wheezing painfully, he slowed long enough to brace himself against a sturdy duranium wall. He could feel the constant hum of the Calamarain vibrate through the metal. His lungs felt like they were wrapped in barbed wire, and the corridor seemed to swim before his bloodshot eyes. He reached for his hypospray, then remembered that he had emptied its contents into Counselor Troi, feeling a flicker of guilt at having treated a fellow Betazoid so badly. I had no choice, he rebuked his conscience. They were going to put me in stasis, shut down my brain just when I need it most. There was nothing else I could do. I had to get away.
The barrier was all that mattered, and the voice in his mind beckoning to him from beyond the great wall. That voice had promised him life, plus knowledge and power beyond mortal understanding. Come soon, the voice whispered even now. Soon, sooner, soonest. Soon, come soon. Closer to me, closer to you, closer…
All he had to do was create the wormhole, break through the barrier to the other side. Then he would be saved, would be spared from his own terrifying mortality. He would never stop, never cease to be, as Shozana had when she had disappeared before his very eyes.
Your eyes are my eyes are yours. View you, view I…
He closed his eyes, seeking relief in the darkness for just a second. Odd…he could barely remember his wife’s face now; all he could see was the column of energized atoms she had become when the transporter malfunctioned. I shall become pure energy, too, he thought, but in a different, more transcendent way.
“Sir, are you all right? Can I help you?”
Coming closer, closer coming, closer…
He opened his eyes and saw the concerned face of a minor Starfleet officer, a Benzite from the looks of him. Puffs of essential gases escaped from the respiratory device positioned beneath his nostrils. Faal noted a large orange bruise upon his bluish green forehead. “What?” the scientist asked. He could barely hear the officer’s words over the voice calling out to him, growing stronger and louder the nearer they came to the barrier.
The wall divides us, the wall is nigh…deny the wall, and hopes are high…heigh, heigh, heigh!
The more clearly he heard the voice, the more enigmatic its words became. It spoke in riddles, as sacred oracles have always done, but Faal had deciphered its message from the beginning. Eternal life and enlightenment waited beyond the galactic barrier.
The wall is nigh, the wall deny…heigh, high hope, heigh.
“You don’t look well, sir,” the Benzite said. “I’m on my way to sickbay.” He held a sleeve that was stained with whatever Benzites used for blood. Tiny droplets peeled off the torn fabric and floated in the weightless corridor. “Can I help you there?”
“No,” Faal wheezed. He shook his head, then regretted it; the motion caused the floor to spin beneath his feet even faster than before. It took all his concentration to make his tongue move the way it had to, say the words the Benzite needed to hear. “The wall is…I mean, I have to get to Engineering. Mr. La Forge needs me,” he lied.
Closer to the wall, closer to the All…
The Benzite looked dubious. He assessed Faal’s heaving chest and trembling limbs. “Are you sure, sir? No offense, but I don’t think you’re in any shape to assist anyone.”
Why won’t he leave me alone? Faal thought desperately. Every moment he was kept away from his goal was a torture. Closing on the wall, or is the wall closing on you, closing the door…? He wanted to hurl the overly solicitous officer away, consign him to oblivion, but instead he had to waste precious moments allaying the concerns of this nonentity. Close, closing, closer… “I’m all right,” Faal assured him, forcing himself to smile reassuringly. “I’m not injured, just a little closer…that is, just a little ill. It must be the weightlessness.”
“Oh, right.” The Benzite nodded his head. “I wouldn’t know. Benzites don’t get nauseous.”
“You’re very fortunate, then,” Faal gasped. Come closer to me closer to you, soon, sooner, soonest. “But I’ll be close…fine…if I can just make it to a turbolift.”
“We’re at red alert, sir,” the Benzite pointed out helpfully. “The turbolifts are only for emergency use.”
“This is an emergency, you dolt!” He couldn’t hide his impatience any longer. The ship was approaching the barrier. He had to get to Engineering, launch the torpedo containing the magneton generator, force La Forge to initiate the subspace matrix, create the artificial wormhole, liberate the voice…. There was so much to do in so little time, and this blue-skinned, gas-sniffing cretin would simply not let him be. “The voice is calling me. I have to go!”
Soon, sooner. Come to the wall, come soon…
Lurching forward, away from the duranium bulkhead, he grabbed the Benzite’s wounded
arm and shoved it roughly. The crewman’s blood felt slick and greasy against his palm, but the Benzite emitted an inarticulate croak and crouched over in pain, gasping so hard that the fumes wafting from his respirator dissipated before reaching his nostrils. Serves you right, Faal thought vindictively.
More Starfleet personnel came around the corner ahead, a man and two women, in scorched gray uniforms. Faal breathed a sigh of relief that they had not arrived in time to see him accost the Benzite. “He’s hurt badly,” he blurted hastily, pointing back at the breathless Benzite. “Hurry. Please help him.” He pushed his way past them, urging them onward, then hurried around the corner until they were out of sight. Hurry, hurry, hurry…come soon come. If fortune was with him, the Benzite wouldn’t be able to speak clearly for a few more moments, giving him time to get away.
The time is nigh, the wall is high, defy the nigh high wall…try!
The barbed wire tore at his lungs with every breath and his heart was pounding alarmingly, but he refused to let his debilitated physical state slow him down. He was more than this decaying shell of crude flesh and bone. His mind could overrule the limitations of his treacherous body and soon would be able to do far more than that. I’m coming, his mind called to the voice beyond the wall, the voice that had summoned him all the way from Betazed, enticed him away from his children and his deathbed. Do not forsake me. I will bring down the wall. I will, I swear it.
