No Limits

by Peter David

  Amanda smiled sweetly. “I did some work in neurobiology before Q brought me here.”

  “A logical choice for a healer. You are one of those that I have come to train.”

  “The Vulcan capacity for stating the obvious never ceases to amaze me,” Q said, smirking. “You’ll be teaching all three of them advanced field medicine.”

  Q called the other healers over. “Dr. Selar, this is Q, and Q.”

  Selar resisted the sudden urge to shake her head. At least Amanda had kept her name. The dichotomy of reasoning that would lead a race to all name themselves the same thing was vast, indeed.

  The first Q lowered its hood, revealing an older female with a kind, maternal face; straight, sandy blond hair down to her chin; and brilliant blue eyes the color of Selar’s Starfleet uniform. Holding out her hand in the traditional Vulcan greeting, she said, “Peace and long life.” The woman’s voice was gentle and melodious, but belied an age far greater than her physical appearance. “Amanda said that lesser species such as yours prefer to give themselves individual names so that others may refer to them without confusion. You may call me Monica.”

  Ignoring the insult, Selar held her palm out in kind. “Live long and prosper, Monica.”

  “And you may refer to me as Tenley,” the second Q—an older male—said. “We have heard much about you.” Tenley’s voice was rough, but not overly so, and Selar noted that this Q had done something she had seen in no other: he had appeared with graying black hair. For a race as notoriously vain as the Q, this was unexpected. Still, he appeared no less friendly than Monica.

  “You have?” Selar asked. “I was not aware.”

  “Amanda has told us much about you,” Monica said. “She says that you are respected and trusted.”

  “Yes,” Tenley said. “I’m not sure any of our people would have leapt to that Q’s aid as quickly as you did. We believe that we can simply visualize whatever we desire, and it will happen. We tend to forget, though, that we have to learn precisely what we desire, first.”

  “It’s like that warp-core explosion that Q set up on the Enterprise,” Amanda softly interjected. “If I hadn’t learned some plasma dynamics, I might not have known how to stop it properly.”

  Selar gave a short nod. “I will teach you. Should we not begin?”

  Her three students exchanged glances.

  Amanda finally answered. “Sounds good.”

  “Wonderful,” Q said. “I’ll leave you to it. I still need to go find Q. Maybe I’ll talk to that Janeway woman while I’m at it. She may have more to do with this than I thought.”

  In a flash of white light, Q was gone.

  Pulling out her tricorder and looking at all of the triage patients, Selar tried to think of the best place to start.

  They surrounded the bed of the first patient, a young male whose left femur was distorted by a compound fracture. The fear rolling off of him was almost palpable. “Peace and long life,” she said, hoping to settle the boy’s mind. “I am Selar.”

  The Q nodded, his close-cropped hair looking somehow incongruous with the Vulcan features. “Q,” he said. “I am Q.”

  She aimed her tricorder at the injured leg, and got to work.

  Selar spent the next few hours—or was it days?—showing her surprisingly eager students how to treat every injury that came through the ward.

  As she sat in the drab gray mess hall afterward staring at her plomeek soup and spice tea, Selar considered her students’ performances. Amanda had proven to be the quickest study, as Selar had expected from everything Beverly Crusher had said. The young Q was picking up ways to handle even the most disabling of trauma, from disruptor burns to grenade-induced amputations and beyond. If she had chosen to remain among humans, Selar couldn’t help but wonder how much Amanda’s abilities would have benefited the Federation.

  Monica and Tenley, however, had required more help than Selar had initially suspected. They were more than adequate healers, but Selar had found it necessary to take over on each of their more seriously injured patients. No matter how often she showed them more subtle techniques, they never seemed to pick them up. Monica had also proven to have an excellent bedside manner, but Tenley made up for that in his lack of communication skills with the patient.

  Selar concentrated, and tried to visualize a simple padd. It took a few seconds of focus, but the device slowly coalesced on the table. It looked just like the padds she’d used on the Enterprise. Somewhat pleased with herself, Selar slipped the stylus out of its cradle and tapped on the screen.

  Nothing happened.

  She tapped again—nothing.

  How could she have conjured a working medical tricorder, but not a padd? Perhaps this had something to do with Tenley’s statement that the Q needed to learn what they desired, first? Selar realized that she had never actually handled a padd beyond making use of it. Dismissing the nonfunctioning padd with a thought, Selar conjured an old-fashioned notepad and pen and began jotting down notes.

  “You’re that doctor that Q brought in, aren’t you?”

  Selar looked up from her work to see a middle-aged human male with blond hair that was longer than the modern convention. He was dressed in a simple gray tunic and pants, and his friendly expression reminded Selar of Monica and Tenley if they were a little more patronizing. None of Selar’s prior information on the Q suggested they were all so mollifying and cordial around those they deemed lesser beings. Certainly the Q that had tormented the Enterprise over the years wasn’t such an entity. Selar made a quick note to amend the file when she returned to her universe.

  “Yes,” Selar replied. “How may I assist you?”

  Q appeared surprised by her question. “Oh, I just wanted to see if it was really you. How are you adjusting to life in the Continuum?” He gestured toward her pen and paper. “I see you’ve brought a few things from your universe here.”

  “Yes,” Selar said. “Not as much as I would like, but—”

  “Dr. Selar!”

  She turned to find Monica standing in the mess hall doorway, panic in her eyes. “Yes, Monica?”

  “You’re needed in the infirmary!”

  Selar quickly retrieved her notepad and pen, shoving her medical tricorder into one of the pockets of her robes. She sprinted out of the mess hall and across the small compound to the infirmary.

  Selar heard the yelling long before she reached the operating chamber. Amanda and Tenley were both working on a patient who had been seriously injured, if the amount of blood staining their robes was any indication.

  Selar stopped in her tracks when she realized the blood was red.

  First the Q that appeared human; now there was a patient with red blood in the middle of a Vulcan-Romulan conflict. What was happening? Historically, there hadn’t been any red-blooded species involved in the civil war, so why were they showing up now?

  Another wail of pain pulled her back to the situation at hand. On the exam table was a human male, she couldn’t tell precisely how old, missing his leg below the left knee.

  “Make sure there is pressure on the wound,” Selar said, taking charge of the situation. “Did anyone find the rest of his leg?”

  Two soldiers stood off in the corner, both covered in blood. They were staring absently ahead as though they were in their own little worlds.

  “Did you find the rest of his leg?” she asked again, a little more sharply than she’d have liked. She quickly centered herself, forcing her emotions back into check.

  When control didn’t come immediately, Selar reined herself in as best she could. A man’s life was in jeopardy. There would be time for proper meditation later.

  The two soldiers looked at each other, then down at the darkening morass of blood on their uniforms. They both shook their heads.

  Selar inspected what Amanda and Tenley had done so far. The remainder of the leg was properly elevated, and Amanda had her gloved hands pressed firmly to the compress over the wound. Selar conjured a blanket, sprea
ding it over the man’s torso as soon as it materialized. Grabbing her tricorder from her pocket, she checked her patient over for any other injuries.

  When she was confident that the only injury she was dealing with was the amputation, she went to work, allowing her students only to watch and act as nurses whenever she needed a second set of hands. She didn’t need them to hand her instruments, as Selar found it easier to just conjure the tools she needed when they were necessary and place them aside when she was through.

  What seemed like an interminable amount of time later, Selar finished sealing the last of the arteries in the severed leg with a laser cauterization unit. It was a crude solution to the problem, but it was the best she could manage at the time.

  She thought about trying to conjure a biobed, but it took too much energy for her to bring forth a simple tool like the cauterizer. Selar didn’t want to think about what something as complicated as a biobed might do. Having the method to treat the patient was useless if the doctor was dead.

  As the young man was taken away to recover, Selar collected the tools that she had conjured onto a medical tray for Monica to remove.

  “You’re settling in quickly,” Amanda said, gathering some of the soiled linens. “I almost wish I’d had it so easy when my powers developed.”

  Selar considered the idea. Perhaps there was something to Q’s belief that Vulcans weren’t quite “lesser beings” after all. It was eminently logical, considering the Vulcan mastery of emotion and the intellect. Naturally, the Q would turn to a Vulcan for assistance, just as a Vulcan would quickly adapt to the powers of the Q. “Perhaps,” she finally replied. “However, you have also adjusted to your new life well. It has only been a few months.”

  Amanda gave a soft chuckle. “A few months? Doctor, I’ve been here for a few years. Time works differently in the Continuum.”

  “Q mentioned that,” Selar said. “That was part of the reason that she gave me abilities equal to your own.”

  A soft, understanding smile lit Amanda’s features. “Otherwise, you’d probably go insane if you were here for very long. I’m told it’s happened before whenever one of our kind has brought one of the younger races into the Continuum. It’s the multiple dimensions and temporal physics. If you’re not born to it…” Amanda’s voice drifted off. She quickly seemed to shake herself out of whatever train of thought she’d taken. “Have you thought about what you’re going to do when the war is over?”

  Selar arranged her cleaned instruments meticulously on the stand. “Q has promised me that when you no longer require my assistance, I will be returned to the Enterprise at the moment I was removed.”

  “That’s Q,” Amanda said amiably. Dropping the linens into a nearby bin, she added, “She likes to keep things interesting.”

  “That is true. When she first brought me to the Continuum, we ended up on Tyrus III.” At Amanda’s confused expression, Selar continued, “It was a planet dominated by a Saurian species, until they were the unfortunate beneficiaries of our conflict with the Romulans. The indigenous races of Tyrus III have been extinct since before the Federation was born.”

  A hand fell on Selar’s arm. Turning, she found Monica looking up at her with concern in her blue eyes. “That is what I fear might happen to your universe if our civil war does not end soon. Some aspects of our battle can be felt in your universe, and not even a fully-empowered Q can stop their effects once unleashed.”

  The memory of Q’s first appearance in sickbay flashed in Selar’s mind. “When Q first came to me, the Enterprise was shaken by a supernova shortly after she appeared.”

  Monica nodded. “That would be one of our higher-yield explosives.”

  “And the only way to stop the supernovae is to stop the explosions?”

  “Yes.”

  Selar began considering everything she’d ever done that might prove beneficial to the situation. Certainly, Captain Picard would have been a better choice for a diplomatic resolution to the problem, but—as Q had made abundantly clear—Selar’s primary objective had been to help them learn medicine. If she could be half as successful with diplomacy in the Continuum as she had been with medicine, there was hope for them all. Selar almost smiled at the notion that she could return to the Enterprise as the entity that single-handedly saved the Q Continuum. There was something almost poetic about it.

  “What was the inciting event for the war?” Selar asked.

  Amanda leaned against one of the empty exam tables. “The way I heard it, one of us found a way to commit suicide. Quinn got bored and wanted out. After he died, others wanted the freedom to make that same choice, even though it violated some of the ideas we had on space and time—as if physics worked any differently from time here. Some of the others liked things just the way they were, and tried to stop it from changing. Tempers rose, and here we are.”

  Selar couldn’t help but think that her initial idea of a different perspective might have been the exact solution all along.

  “Where do you think Q has gone?” Monica asked, glancing at Amanda.

  The young girl shrugged. “Knowing Q, she went off trying to find that Q of hers.” Amanda smiled. “And knowing him, he’s off causing trouble someplace.”

  “You don’t think he went to Janeway, do you?” Monica asked. Selar could hear shock in the older Q’s voice.

  “Maybe,” Amanda said with a shrug. Pushing herself away from the exam table, she added, “Come on, let’s go get some dinner.”

  When they reached the open area of the compound, Selar’s Vulcan hearing picked up something—or, more appropriately, the absence of something. “The shooting has stopped.”

  The three women exchanged expectant looks.

  Selar scanned the darkness that surrounded the small field hospital, an instinct she hadn’t realized she had telling her that there was a problem out there waiting to happen. A flicker of trepidation worked its way up her spine. It was a feeling that she was surprised to discover she liked.

  This time, however, she didn’t try to suppress the emotion. She allowed it to roll around in her brain for a while, considering all of its nuances and facets. The more she examined it, the more appealing it became.

  And the less it threatened to take over her mind, as emotion often did with humans.

  For the first time that she could recall, Selar allowed herself to smile.

  “Okay, that’s a little too weird,” Amanda said, the index finger of her left hand extended toward Selar. “They always told me that Vulcans don’t smile. What’s going on?”

  Taking a deep breath, Selar reluctantly forced the lid back down on her emotions. “I believe that using the powers your kind possess I may have discovered a path toward finding balance between emotion and logic. My people are so accustomed to suppressing all emotion and allowing logic to rule that they’ve denied themselves something as elegantly simple as experiencing fear. We’ve denied ourselves instinctual emotions that could possibly save our lives. This place—”

  Monica gave a soft chuckle. “I believe she is beginning to think like a Q, Amanda.”

  “Hello, dears. Miss me?”

  Selar turned toward the voice, and found Q standing a few steps away. Her hair was pulled up into what appeared to be human pin curls, and she was clad in a full-length mauve floral dress with tapered, wrist-length sleeves and many, many gathers. The enormous hoop skirt looked like an overturned bowl, and the entire dress appeared to be edged in thin white lace. If Selar had her human history correct—something she did not doubt—it looked like something from the era of the United States Civil War. “Where have you been?”

  Q turned to her side, revealing the bulge under her dress. “Q and I have been a little busy,” she said, backing her jovial tone with a broad smile. Selar couldn’t help but note that Q’s entire demeanor seemed brighter than it had before.

  “Oh my!” Amanda walked over and placed a hand on Q’s abdomen. “You’re pregnant!”

  Q gave her a sideways look. �
�Been talking to the Vulcan too much, dear?”

  “No,” Amanda replied, backing it with a short-lived glare. Her smile quickly returned. “I wish we all had names. I’ve always loved the name Grace. Or maybe Tynan if it’s a boy.”

  “My goodness.” Monica dazedly stepped toward Q, shaking her head. “There has not been a baby born in the Continuum in billions of years.”

  Q patted her stomach. “Well, there will be….” Her voice trailed off as her eyes widened. With a look of abject terror, she looked down at her feet and said in a very small voice, “Soon.”

  Selar had a bad feeling about the situation. “No children have been born in the Continuum? That means nobody here knows—”

  “How Q bring children into the world,” Monica finished.

  All eyes fell on Amanda, but the young girl shook her head. “Don’t look at me. My parents had me on Earth.”

  Selar pulled her emotions back into check. “I’m versed in the reproductive methods of the thirteen species in regular residence on board the Enterprise, as well as over one hundred other Federation member species. This cannot possibly be any more difficult than if the child were Andorian.”

  The cry Q let out at that moment suggested that it might.

  “Q,” Selar said, “I need you to listen to me. I want you to begin breathing like this. It will assist you in not hyperventilating.” She began regulating her breathing in a paced manner. “Do not focus on the pain. Do you understand?”

  “You try not focusing on the pain, Vulcan!” Q said, her voice a snarl.

  “Monica, please assist me in getting Q to the infirmary,” Selar said. “Amanda, we’re going to need sterile linens. Have one of the technicians tilt a bed so it is at a thirty-degree angle to the floor. We’ll use that for Q.”

  The young girl nodded before sprinting ahead.

  Selar and Monica both tried to help Q remain upright as they headed toward their makeshift delivery room, but the hoops in Q’s skirt were getting in the way. At that point, Selar decided to try something. She quickly visualized a long, flowing hospital gown like the ones she had sometimes seen used at Starfleet Medical. When the image was fixed in her mind, she attempted to use her new abilities to change Q’s attire.