by Peter David
“Computer, access the pre-Federation Vulcan database. Is there any mention of someone resembling the entity that was just in sickbay?”
If the reports hadn’t mentioned the immortality of the Q, she might not have thought it logical to look so far back in Vulcan history. However, she had what Dr. Crusher might have called a hunch.
“Match found.”
She called up the picture. It was an image of one of the first Vulcans to work closely with the Terrans, T’Pol, speaking with two Andorians and a human woman in an old Earth Starfleet uniform during the peace negotiations with the Andorians on Paan Mokar. According to the record, the Andorians pictured were named Tarah and Shran, while the Terran was simply listed as a diplomat assisting Captain Jonathan Archer.
Unnamed or not, Selar would have known those high cheekbones, that long fiery red hair, and that haughty expression anywhere. The “Terran diplomat” was, in reality, a Q.
2367
Selar adjusted a setting on the medical tricorder and ran the scan once again. The bruise on Lieutenant Worf’s right anterior cranial ridge was proving to be more severe than she’d initially suspected.
Worf merely growled.
“Do not move, please,” Selar said. The results were precisely what she’d thought: The contusion had reached the bone. “Nurse Ogawa, please set the dermal regenerator for a bone contusion.”
The tool appeared just under Selar’s left arm, but when she reached down to grab it, she noticed something amiss. The fingers that were wrapped around the dermal regenerator did not have Alyssa Ogawa’s skin pigmentation.
“Nurse Ogawa?”
“Not quite, dear.”
Selar raised an eyebrow, slowly turning away from her patient. At least Q had picked the right uniform this time. “You again.”
Q smiled, and Selar briefly thought that any human would probably have found it an unsettling sight.
The Vulcan, however, found it fascinating. Selar had read reports on the various encounters with members of the Q Continuum over the years, and found the paper recently filed by Dr. Julian Bashir of Deep Space 9 of particular interest.
In a microsecond, Selar was transported from ward three and her patient into the middle of a scarred ruin of a landscape. The unmistakable whine of disruptor fire sounded in the distance. Mottled red stone surrounded her, laden with craters she could only presume were from munitions fire. The moonlit night air was thick with smoke and an acrid dust from the crossfire. Squinting to protect her eyes, she quickly pulled her uniform collar up over her mouth as best she could. It felt as though a mountain had been ground into fine particles and suspended in midair with no hope of dissipation.
Selar considered removing her uniform jacket. Even by Vulcan standards this was a hot planet. She briefly thought that only a reptilian species might have been able to handle the heat on a regular basis. That was when she realized where Q had placed her. “The Vulcan-Romulan War.”
“Yes,” Q said, leaning against one of the standing black stones as if nothing were amiss. “It’s something I thought your less-evolved brain might be able to understand.” Walking slowly toward Selar, Q continued, “The Continuum is in the middle of a civil war. We need your help.”
Selar raised her left eyebrow. “You require my assistance?”
“That’s what I said.” Q had barely finished the statement before she began coughing. When it was over, she placed a hand over her mouth in an impractical attempt at a breathing mask.
“Intriguing,” Selar said, feeling the grit beginning to work at her own trachea. She could not recall ever tasting anything so metallic in her life. “I thought your species was omnipotent.”
Q’s hand left her mouth. “We’re omnipotent, not omniscient,” she said, taking the tone Selar had often heard humans use toward a misbehaving youth. “There are things going on in the Continuum that we’ve never dealt with before, and we’ve been around for billions of years. We’ve seen other, lesser beings fight among themselves, but the thought that we could stoop to such a level never occurred to us. Our powers aren’t working consistently, and that’s just the beginning.”
Another explosion shook the ground around them, and both Selar and Q reached for the nearest stone outcrop.
“It’s getting worse,” Q said, her arrogance slipping. “Q are dying.”
That piqued Selar’s interest. “According to our reports, Q are immortal.”
“Apparently not,” Q stated snippily. “We’re being injured and actually facing death for the first time any of us can remember.”
“I understand,” Selar said.
“No. No, you don’t.” Q’s lips twisted as she looked around the area. All of the capriciousness that Selar had come to expect from members of the Continuum was gone. She even thought she sensed a flicker of fear. Q stared into the slowly dissipating dust clouds and said, “Nothing is worse than the weapons that an omnipotent race can devise when they want to hurt each other.”
The scream of a rocket-propelled disruptor grenade sounded nearby, and it was getting closer. Both women ducked, the grenade narrowly missing them before it impacted with a boulder no more than ten feet from where they stood. Selar managed to shield herself from the flying shrapnel in time, but when the debris stopped raining down, she saw that Q had not been so lucky. The woman was covered in bits of pulverized stone, and being racked by another coughing fit. Selar didn’t venture checking on her any more closely until it appeared that no more grenades were heading toward them. By then, Q’s coughing had subsided to an occasional hacking.
“Stay down. I need to examine your wounds.” Blood trickled down Q’s nose from a laceration near the center of her forehead. Upon further examination, it appeared that a thin piece of stone had become embedded just over Q’s right eye. Selar tried to think of a possible dressing for the wound from the meager bits of plant life that were tucked here and there across the stone field, but nothing appeared useful. That was when a warm breeze found her arm. She tracked it to a hole in her sleeve. Sticking two fingers inside the wound in the fabric, Selar used them to tear a piece off. It wasn’t perfect, but it would do until they found a hospital. Folding the fabric into a compress, she placed it on Q’s injury.
“Hold this to your forehead and press as solidly as you can. It will help stop the bleeding. Does this location have medical facilities?”
Q tried to shake her head, but it appeared to make her unsteady. “None that do us any good,” she said. “That’s why I came to you. We’ve got all of the power we could ever want, but no idea of how to use it to heal ourselves. Your ship has assisted the Q in the past, so I thought you might be willing to do so again.”
Selar managed to stand. She looked around the area for signs of an encampment of any sort in the vicinity. “Why did you not approach Dr. Crusher? She has a background in medical instruction—”
“And is human,” Q said, derision in her slowly deteriorating voice. “The others could never accept someone from such an intellectually challenged species as an instructor. A Vulcan is far less deficient. You might even be able to figure out a way to stop this nonsense that we haven’t already thought of.”
Selar checked to make sure Q was applying appropriate pressure to her forehead before wrapping an arm around her midsection to help her stand. Slowly, they made their way out of the stone field. Explosion after explosion sounded in the distance, growing more frequent by the footstep.
The war was beginning to escalate.
When Q asked for a rest, Selar stopped and assisted her patient to gingerly sit on a small boulder near their path. The air was growing less polluted the farther they walked, a fact that appeared to be helping Q recover herself.
“Why do you believe that I might be of assistance with diplomacy?” Selar asked.
After a few deep breaths, Q said, “I thought you might have picked up something from Picard. He’s Q’s favorite pet. You might have a better insight into what Q’s planning than we do.”
“Supposedly,” Q said.
“And your mate is fighting for the opposition in this battle?”
Q was silent for a long moment, long enough for Selar to determine that her hypothesis had a high probability of being correct. She briefly wondered what she would do if she ever found herself on the opposite side of a battle from Voltak, her own mate. As they were both Vulcan, and mated from youth, logic indicated that their approach to the problem would at the very least be similar. Diplomacy would not be necessary between them, as they would logically be on the same side of the conflict.
“I am a physician, not a diplomat. Why do you believe that I would have a solution to a dispute between you and your mate?”
The briefest trace of a smile turned the edge of Q’s lip. “Q is leading the revolution, and he’s absolutely fascinated by humans. So, I’ve been studying how humans have approached diplomacy though their history, even talked to a few over the years. There was this one woman, half-Klingon, certainly had a lot of spunk.” Q slowly shook her head. “You’ve been around humans longer than Q. You can give us an idea of how they think, what Q might do with their advice, and then we use it to win. Help us, and when this war is over I can return you to that little ship of yours at the exact moment you left.”
Her left eyebrow raised, Selar said, “You have an—unusual—interpretation of diplomacy.”
“Yes, well,” Q said, her arrogance returning, “we’ve never really needed it before. I’m sure you Vulcans have never done anything illogical, either.”
Selar let the jab slide, but couldn’t deny her point. She briefly attempted to envision the Q that enjoyed toying with the Enterprise trying to negotiate peace, and failed to get even a mental flicker. For a race that had existed for billions upon billions of years, the Q seemed as ill equipped to generate a diplomatic solution to a conflict as the Vulcans and Romulans had been during the century-long battle between their races. “Perhaps a new perspective will assist you in ending this conflict.”
Q appeared lost in thought for a moment. “That’s quite logical, since a ‘new perspective’ started this—wait a minute. I wonder if this has something to do with that Janeway woman. She did allow Quinn to commit suicide.”
Selar raised an eyebrow. Janeway? Surely she couldn’t be talking about Commander Kathryn Janeway of the Billings? As far as Selar knew, that ship had no recorded contact with members of the Q Continuum.
“So?” Q asked as she used her free hand to delicately push herself off of the boulder she’d been using as a chair. “How about it? There are other things I need to check on.”
Selar slipped an arm back around Q’s midsection as they continued to walk onward. “I do admit that the idea of teaching medicine to an omnipotent race is quite intriguing. However, my skills are also required on board the Enterprise. How long would you require my services?”
“It’s not easy for me to say this, but I don’t know,” Q replied. “It depends on how long the war takes. Things are different in the Continuum. Time doesn’t work the way you’re used to it working, to begin with. I suppose we could give you powers equal to our own for—”
The roar of another explosion in the vicinity drowned the remainder of Q’s statement out. Selar ducked. The grenade had come down only a dozen meters to their left, but somehow hadn’t kicked up enough debris to do them serious damage. Pressing forward, Q stumbled, losing her grip on the makeshift compress when she tried to reach for a stone to regain her balance. Selar reached down and recovered the fabric from the ground, brushing as much of the dirt and dust from it as she could. The compress wasn’t as damp with blood as Selar expected. “You are not pressing this to the wound solidly enough. We should find a way to bind it to—”
When Selar looked up, she found Q staring at her, a vague hint of pleading in her eyes. “It’s not easy for my people to ask for help, Selar, but we need it.”
Selar surveyed the battleground that surrounded them. “I believe you,” she said. “And I offer my assistance.”
Q heaved a sigh of relief. “Good.”
In the blink of an eye, Selar went from the dark menace of the battlefield to a brightly lit chamber. When her eyes adjusted to the change, Selar realized that it was some kind of field infirmary. Three figures draped in white moved between tables, tending to patients with a surprising efficiency, considering they were equipped with the kind of instruments Selar only knew of from history texts. Laser scalpels, old-fashioned hyposprays, even a few pre-Federation medical scanners were neatly arranged on tables through the facility.
Selar slowly began walking between the prone patients, mentally assessing each wound as she went. A broken leg here, a disruptor burn there, it all seemed to be logical battlefield injuries that any capable physician should have been able to handle.
Until one of the injured men began screaming.
Two of the healers rushed to the man, whose cries became interspersed with violent convulsions. They began quickly trying to do their work. When Selar reached the exam table, she noted with some disconcertion that the victim had a severe disruptor wound to the area around his cervical vertebrae and another in his lower anterior spinal region. Whatever Romulan had shot this man had wanted him to suffer before he died.
Selar began to feel something she hadn’t known in decades build in her stomach as she watched the two healers work: anxiety. Her discipline had always been more than enough to suppress such rudimentary emotions, so the ease with which they came to her now was surprising. The healers were doing so much that was right, covering his legs with a blanket, giving fluids intravenously, attempting to minimize the damage to the spinal region, but something told her it wasn’t going to be enough.
If she only had a surgical support.
She fought the nervousness into its proper place and tried to figure out a treatment using what little she had to work with. Laser scalpels were useless. Medical scanners wouldn’t tell her anything she didn’t already know.
“Do you have any kelotane?” she asked anyone who would listen. When there was no reply, she began riffling through the medical cabinet that stood against one wall. The only useful substance she could find was a vial of asinolyathin. Admittedly, using such a muscle relaxant was an inelegant solution, but it would at the very least ease the patient’s pain while the healers worked.
Once the asinolyathin had been administered, she began to take over care of the patient. She had seen third-degree burns such as this only a few times in her life, but it was enough to know that they were never the same twice. She did everything she could, thought of every possible treatment, but after a few frantic minutes, the antiquated monitors ceased to pick up life signs.
Selar fought to resuscitate the young man, but it was for naught. Finally, she stopped. There was no bringing this patient back. A sharp anger started to fill her, and once again she suppressed it. She took a step away from the exam table.
Across the walkway, the third of the white-robed figures was tending to a seated patient’s wounded head. When the healer finally backed away, Selar could see that it was the female Q. Her forehead wound was completely healed, but she was clad in the ancient black leathers and woven silver of a field officer. Q’s facial features had also been slightly altered to fit the environment. Instead of curving around her ocular cavity as a human’s would, Q’s red eyebrows rose as they grew away from the center of her cranial ridge in a typically Vulcan manner.
“What do you think?” she said, turning so that Selar could see her profile. “I’m not sure the eyebrows are quite me.” Q tucked a few strands of titian hair behind an ear that now came to a very Vulcan point. “Do the ears work?”
“That man might have been saved,” Selar said, ignoring Q’s vanity. “Your healers—”
“Need your help,” Q finished, hopping off the table. “This is no diff
erent from that battlefield, Selar. It’s a way for us to show you this so you’ll understand it. We’re dying. There’s no easy way to say it.” Q held out her hand, and on her flattened palm appeared a folded item of heavy white linen. “Your robes, Doctor,” she said. Q’s tone had all of the solemnity of the commandant handing out diplomas at Starfleet Academy—but none of the sincerity.
Selar reached for the proffered garment. “Do you not have more advanced equipment? A medical tricorder, perhaps?”
The words had barely left Selar’s mouth before one appeared on top of the folded robes.
“Ah, good. Looks like you’re starting to learn how to use your abilities,” Q said.
She was? Selar arched one eyebrow. She did feel…unusual. Something was tempting her to let go of her mental discipline, to allow her emotions to come to the fore. Was this what true omnipotence felt like?
Fascinating.
But she was Vulcan. She would not lose her so carefully maintained control.
She took the tricorder and the robe. Within seconds she was wearing her new uniform and had her tricorder set, making her comfortably armed for any medical battle that might walk through the door.
“Dr. Selar?”
The source of the voice lowered the hood of her robe, and Selar looked down into gentle dark eyes and a cherubic face that was rimmed in blond hair. Like Q, she also appeared Vulcan, but Selar knew that under the façade was a Q who had been raised among humans. “Amanda Rogers.”
“What are you doing in the Continuum?”
Selar briefly entertained the idea of saying that she had come to check up on Amanda, but dismissed it as too undisciplined. “One of your people requested my assistance.”
“Yes, dear,” Q said, stepping around Amanda to put a hand on Selar’s shoulder. “She’s going to teach you what you need to know about medicine.”
“I thought your primary area of expertise was eco-regeneration?” Selar asked, remembering what she could of the young woman. Dr. Crusher had taken her under her wing when Amanda had first arrived on the Enterprise, but Selar had rarely seen the girl thanks to the necessities of the mission to Tagra IV.