by Greg Cox
0 paid no attention to the insignificant efforts of Picard, distracted by the ascension of the Calamarain. “Smoke and snow. Snow and smoke. Choke, smoke, choke!” His cracked lips curled downward as he recalled, possibly, the way the Coulalakritous had forcibly expelled him from their collective being a million years ago. He clenched his fist at the fleeing Calamarain, then began to squeeze. “Smoke into snow…”
Baeta Leyoro had seen a lot of ugly things in her career, but this 0 character took the grand prize. He looked like a half-mad Tarsian POW crossed with a bioluminescent squid from the pitch-black bottom of some alien sea. This was the creature that had killed poor Ensign Clarze, and brought the hostile Calamarain down upon the ship? She was willing to believe it.
But what was he doing now?
His fist was clenched so tightly that his elongated fingernails were digging mercilessly into his own flesh. It was as if he already had the Calamarain in his grasp and were squeezing them into submission.
And maybe he was. The plasma cloud’s airborne retreat slowed, then began to reverse itself. The Calamarain dropped toward the snow-blanketed plain, losing altitude dramatically. The cloud appeared smaller, too, and more densely opaque. He’s compressing it, she realized, hitting on the truth intuitively; somehow 0 was concentrating the free-floating plasma into a smaller and smaller space. She wondered urgently how much longer the Calamarain would be able to maintain a gaseous state under that crushing pressure.
Not long at all, as it turned out. Before her biochemically enhanced eyes, the Calamarain liquefied in midair, raining down upon the icescape like phosphorescent sleet. Leyoro ran to get out from beneath the bizarre precipitation, then twisted around to watch the shower of living liquid crash to earth less than four meters away. But were the Calamarain still alive, she wondered. Could they survive in such a fundamentally different state?
0 was not taking any chances. “Hah!” he hooted, enjoying his triumph. “Smoke to slush! Crush the slush! Crush!” Greenish blood leaked out between his clenched fingers as he continued to squeeze whatever remained of the Calamarain.
Leyoro raced to where the transformed cloud came to ground. She found the Calamarain pooled in a shallow depression in the icy crust. Prismatic reflections on the surface of the puddle made it resemble an oil slick upon the snow, seeping slowly into the frost below. But 0 wasn’t finished with the Calamarain yet; as Leyoro watched, the glowing liquid grew thicker and more viscous. Its innate radiance slowly faded as it began to crystalize, freezing solid in a matter of seconds. Its amorphous boundaries congealed, becoming fixed and immobile. Leyoro didn’t know a lot about the nature and needs of the Calamarain, but she had to assume that the once-gaseous entity had been locked into a state of suspended animation at the very least, which pretty much sent Captain Picard’s long-shot plan straight down the gravity well.
“Smoke to slush to solid,” 0 gloated. “Atmosphere to ichor to ice. The smoke never learns. Never learns does the smoke!”
Leyoro got the distinct impression that the ranting monster had done this to the Calamarain before, which might mean that the frozen life-form could still be revived. An idea occurred to her: Once, during the war back home, after her scout-ship had been shot down over the south pole of Tarsus, she had used her disruptor to melt the permafrost into drinking water. She had even warmed herself over the steam. Maybe that was the way to go.
She fired her phaser at the Calamarain, not to hurt, but to heal. At first it didn’t seem to do any good, but then the hard crystalline edges of the cloud-creature’s remains began to deliquesce. The paralyzed alien seemed to absorb the heat from her phaser as fast as she could fire the energy into it. Her weapon, which was no longer a weapon, broke down the crystal lattice into which the Calamarain had been crammed. The solid sheet of plasma residue spread out as it melted, beginning to shine once more with a radiance of its own.
Her rescue efforts did not go unnoticed. 0 glared at her murderously, flinging his torch away in disgust. It landed upon the snow several paces away, sputtering fitfully. “Cheat!” he accused her. “Cheaters, all of you! Cheat, cheated, cheating!”
He didn’t charge at her. He didn’t need to. Without warning or cause, the phaser in her hand emitted a high-pitched whine that stabbed at Leyoro’s ears and filled her heart with dread. It’s overloading, she realized. He’s doing it somehow. From the sound of it, she had less than a minute before the phaser exploded in her hand.
She stared desperately at the Calamarain. It had melted almost entirely now, but had not yet attained its original gaseous state. The simmering, shimmering puddle was just starting to come to a boil, barely beginning to evaporate. I can’t stop now, she thought, urging the process on with the intensity of her gaze. It still needs a few more seconds. Bubbles churned upon the reflective surface of the ionized liquid that was the Calamarain, coming to a froth as the heat of the phaser sped up the molecules composing the fluid, sending them farther and farther apart. Incandescent fumes rose from the shallow pool, encouraging Leyoro even as the ear-piercing shriek of the malfunctioning phaser forced her to cover one ear with her free hand. Almost there, she thought, so close to success that nothing short of a quantum torpedo could make her stop now; if there was one thing she had learned about the Calamarain over the last several hours, it was that they really were Better Off Vaporized….
The keening phaser erupted in a deafening explosion of searing heat and concussive force that sent her flying backward, landing flat on her back in a snowdrift several meters away from the Calamarain. Embedded in the ice, her face and front scorched and smoking, she felt like she was burning and freezing to death at the same time. The pain was excruciating; it was a wonder that she could even see at all after the blinding flash. Let’s hear it for Angosian medical know-how, she thought, coughing up blood.
She didn’t need a medical tricorder to know how extensive her injuries were. She didn’t have a chance. Funny, she thought, as her vision blurred and began to go black, I always thought I couldn’t live without an enemy. Never thought I’d end up dying to save one.
The last thing she saw was the reborn Calamarain rising like an immaterial phoenix from the ice, glittering with all the colors of the rainbow….
“Handle with care the spider’s net,
You can’t be sure that a trap’s not set….”
While 0 sang exuberantly, mocking Q’s approaching demise, the harpoon seemed to have a life and strength of its own, pressing toward Q’s heart and dragging Picard’s frostbitten hands with it. The exhausted captain felt the strain of resisting the spear in his back and shoulders and, most painfully, his arms. It’s ironic, he thought. After all the byzantine puzzles and brain-twisting trials that Q has put me through over the years, I end up standing in the snow, breaking my back to keep him from dying at the point of a primitive spear.
Even the light seemed to be fading with his hopes, as 0’s burning brand sputtered and died somewhere upon the barren plain. The miserly stars provided scant illumination, so that the perpetual night leached all the color from the scene, reducing the world to shades of black and gray. Would he even be able to see when the sharpened tip of the harpoon penetrated Q’s ribs, or would he hear Q cry out first?
“Heedless of what might befall—
You neglect the spider on the wall….”
Then a light broke through the darkness, shining down on he and Q from directly above. He looked up in surprise and saw the Calamarain, scintillating against the bleak arctic sky like the aurora borealis. But had the cloud entity come to aid them at last, or to witness the long-awaited demise of the hated Q?
“Sacrifice/deliverance. Testimony/trust/gratitude. Sacrifice/obligation.”
Sacrifice? Picard heard but did not understand. What did the Calamarain mean? That Q must be sacrificed to win their trust and gratitude? “No,” he stated firmly. “We do not make bargains in the blood of others. I will not be party to Q’s death.”
The Calamarain cast the
ir resplendent light, quite unlike the bloodred glow of 0’s torch, upon Picard’s upturned face. “Misunderstanding/confusion. We/plural grateful/obliged. Sacrifice/deliverance.”
“I don’t understand,” Picard pleaded. He felt that he and Q and the Calamarain were on the verge of a breakthrough that could save them all, if only he could find a better way to communicate. What did the Calamarain want? Who was obliged to whom? What was the sacrifice?
Or who?
Perhaps in answer, the cloud of living plasma plunged toward Q’s anguished face, oozing its way past his flaring nostrils and clenched white teeth, disappearing into his agonized body like a genie returning to a bottle. Q fought against the invasive vapor, twisting his head back and forth in a fruitless attempt to evade the iridescent mist that flowed into him against his will. Then his eyes seemed to widen in understanding and he stopped resisting and took a deep breath. As Picard watched, perplexed and anxious, Q inhaled the substance of the Calamarain, absorbing the alien entity entirely into himself. The whites of his eyes took on the opalescent luster of the living plasma.
“When the spider aims his deadly spikes,
No one sees him till he stri—”
0’s insidious chorus was cut off in midverse when the possessed harpoon suddenly went spinning off through the air, coming to rest in a bank of snow far from Q, who sprang to his feet, his wound healed, his vitality restored. 0 gawked at him, dumbfounded, understanding little more than Picard. “What the devil?” he asked.
“We/plural/Q are ready/prepared for another game/contest/competition,” the revived figure declared. The syntax resembled that of the Calamarain, the voice and the inflections were pure Q. “Do you/singular still like/enjoy games/contests/ competitions?”
This was more than Picard had imagined when he first suggested that Q and the Calamarain join forces. Taking him literally, they had merged into a single being, with the power and potential of both. Even 0, crazed as he was, appeared intimidated by the prospect. “No,” he muttered into his scraggly beard, “one is two is one is two is one….”
All the colors of the Calamarain glistened in Q’s eyes as he raised his hand and released a bolt of lightning from his fingertips that crashed into the snow and ice in front of 0’s rag-wrapped feet. “Tag/gotcha/checkmate!”
Unable to face what Q and the Calamarain had become, 0 tried to escape, taking off across the snow away from Picard and the Q/Calamarain. At first, he ran on two human legs, but when his crippled foot slowed him down, he fell forward onto his four lateral tentacles and scuttled over the packed snow like a spider. Picard stared in wonder and disgust, until his eyes fell upon a charred and motionless body lying askew upon the ice not ten meters away.
Dear God, no, he thought, feeling a chill that had nothing to do with the wind or the weather. The sacrifice….
Unlike Picard, the Q/Calamarain did not pause to grieve. His/their lightning chased after 0, halting his frantic flight with a white-hot thunderbolt that left him sprawled upon the ground. More lightning rained down on him, and as 0 shuddered spasmodically beneath their impact, Picard heard an awe-inducing rumble of thunder that came from outside the holodeck, perhaps even outside the hull of the Enterprise, penetrating the created world of 0’s polar limbo with its inescapable reality. The rest of the Calamarain, he guessed, surrounding the ship. Could it be that the fragment of the Calamarain now residing within Q was channeling the collective might of the entire gaseous community, adding the full strength of all the Calamarain to the power of Q?
It was hard to imagine, but how else to explain the undeniable shift in the balance of power that had occurred when the Calamarain merged with Q? As he had hoped, the sum of two infinite powers had indeed proved more infinite than infinity. Conventional mathematics said otherwise, but, as Picard knew full well, there was nothing conventional about the Calamarain or, especially, Q.
Beneath the barrage of transcendental thunderbolts, 0’s human guise began to slip away once and for all. Flesh and hair and teeth and eyes crumpled away like powder, until all Picard could see was a writhing mass of otherworldly tentacles that flailed about in agony, churning the packed ice and snow into a swirling haze that thankfully obscured the horrific vision. Then the besieged extradimensional entity began to physically shrink in size, its tendrils retracting and diminishing until all that was left was a tiny wriggling creature about the size of a small jellyfish.
Or a spider.
The Q/Calamarain strode across the tundra, leaving deep tracks in the snow, until it towered over the pathetic specimen. The little multilegged monster tried to scurry away, but it could not outrun the shadow of the Q/Calamarain’s upraised foot. The sole of his/their boot hovered over the creature for one ominous moment, and Picard thought he heard an almost inaudible squeal of fear. Then the shoe descended, squashing 0 flat. A single thin tendril, no larger than a hair, stuck out from beneath the shoe, quivering weakly. The Q/Calamarain smiled with obvious satisfaction.
“Game/competition over. We/plural/Q win.”
Nineteen
“Well, it’s a nasty case of frostbite, but nothing modern medicine can’t take care of.”
Beverly finished wrapping Picard’s frozen fingers in thermal conduction strips, then stepped aside to allow him to stand up and step away from the biobed. His fingertips still felt slightly numb but the doctor’s treatment had gone a long way toward restoring their circulation. If only Lieutenant Leyoro and Ensign Clarze could be restored as well, he mused sadly. No matter how many times he lost one of his crew, the pain never got easier. He could only note in his log that they had perished in the performance of their duty; he could think of no better epitaph.
Geordi La Forge approached him from the other side of the primary ward, where Nurse Ogawa had just finished a test on his optical implants. “Well, Captain,” he said, “I must say you’re a sight for sore eyes.” Picard was glad to hear that Geordi’s implants had not been permanently damaged by Lem Faal’s telekinetic rampage. In the end, he reflected, Lem Faal’s most lasting victim may well have been himself.
A broken man, his frightening powers long gone, the celebrated Betazoid scientist, and apparent pawn of 0, now occupied his own biobed not far away. He sat upright, his spine supported by Starfleet cushions, as he stared vacantly before him with eyes that no longer held the lustrous gleam of the galactic barrier. Listening to the man’s labored breathing, and observing the feeble life signs reported on the overhead monitor, Picard could not imagine that Faal had much longer to live. A tragedy, the captain thought, but not nearly as terrible as the consequences of his misguided pursuit of immortality.
Young Milo Faal sat beside the bed, holding his father’s trembling hand and speaking to him softly. “It will be all right, Dad. We’re going home now, where we belong. You don’t need to worry. I’ll take care of you.”
A curious role reversal, Picard observed. The boy had indeed become more of a parent to his father than a son. He admired the youth’s maturity and compassion, especially after all he had heard of the shameful way Faal had neglected and abused his children. Picard could not help holding Faal’s various crimes against him; still, given the sorry state to which the scientist had been reduced, he felt certain the man had been punished enough. He’s a lucky man to have a son like Milo.
Perhaps aware of Picard’s thoughts, the Betazoid boy turned to look in the captain’s direction. A chill ran through Picard when he saw those unearthly white eyes directed at him. There’s a problem I wish I had a solution for. The boy had not deigned to use his new powers since subduing his father in the pediatric ward, but Counselor Troi had confirmed that some residue of the barrier’s unnatural power, derived from the Q themselves, still dwelt within the mind of this child. How can I be sure that those powers will not pose a danger to Milo or others?
A flash of light burst between Picard and Milo, and, for one tense moment, Picard feared that the youth’s amazing abilities had been heard from again. Instead, he was surpri
sed and relieved (and surprised to be relieved) that the light had merely heralded the arrival of the entire Q family, all three of them. Who would have ever thought, he wondered, bemused, that I would ever greet the appearance of Q with anything less than dismay?
As it was, he did experience a degree of apprehension. “What brings you here, Q?”
“Oh, nothing much,” Q replied brightly. He patted the head of baby q, happily draped over his mother’s shoulder, and strolled over to Picard. “Odds and ends, really. For instance, I thought you might be interested to know that my good wife here has called the recent contretemps to the attention of the Continuum and persuaded them, fractious as they are these days, to undertake an immediate project to shore up both barriers and repair all those worrisome fractures, which have proven to be just too tempting to impetuous and irresponsible species such as yourself.”
We’re irresponsible? Picard thought, not sure whether to be amused or appalled by Q’s gall. Still, if Q wanted to shift the blame for the 0 crisis to humanity, Picard had neither the energy nor the inclination to argue the point. At the moment, that is. “And what of 0?” he asked, addressing the only point that truly mattered.
“Back where he belongs,” Q assured him. “If I were you, Picard, I’d persuade your superiors at Starfleet to leave the barrier alone from now on. Even putting aside the problem of 0, the Federation, as well as your assorted allies and rivals, are simply not ready to venture out of the galaxy just yet.”
“We may surprise you,” Picard said, unwilling to impose an absolute limit on the future of space exploration. That was Starfleet’s decision, not the Continuum’s. On that point, at least, he remained steadfast. “Still, it is always best to be fully aware of the dangers involved.”
