by Greg Cox
“Ooh!” q exclaimed, pointing enthusiastically at the screen. He stuck out his index fingers like gun muzzles, as little boys have done since the invention of firearms across the universe, and red-hot beams leaped from his fingertips to sear two burning holes in the visual display panel. Riker jumped out of his seat to protest, terrified that the playful child would create a hull breach beyond the screen. Blast it, he thought. This is the last thing I need right now.
Thankfully the female Q was on top of things. With a snap of her fingers, she squelched the child’s imitative phaser beams and repaired the damage to the main viewer. “Now, now, darling,” she cooed to the boy, “what have I told you about pointing?” Thus chastened, q meekly hid his tiny hands behind his back.
Blast it, Riker thought angrily. The last thing he needed right now were the two Q’s and their antics, even though he seemed to be stuck with them. He sank back into the captain’s chair and concentrated on the Enterprise’s efforts to carve out an escape route. As he had requested, Riker soon saw the welcoming darkness of open space at the far end of the tunnel the phasers had cut through the Calamarain. Now there’s a sight for sore sensors, he thought. “Straight ahead, Mr. Clarze. Full impulse.”
“Yes, sir!” the pilot complied, sounding more than anxious to leave the sentient thunderstorm behind. Riker was gratified to see the distant stars grow brighter as the unscratched viewscreen transmitted images from the ship’s forward optical scanners. Here goes nothing, he thought, crossing his fingers. Once they were clear of the clouds, perhaps their warp engines would function again.
“Riker to Engineering,” he barked, patting his combadge. “Prepare to engage the warp drive at my signal.”
“Acknowledged,” Geordi responded. “We’re ready and willing.”
But the Calamarain would not release them so easily. Thick, viscous vapors flowed over and ahead of the ship’s saucer section, encroaching on the channel before them. Lightning speared their shields repeatedly, giving them a rough and bumpy ride. To his dismay, Riker saw their escape route narrowing ahead, the gathering cloud front eating away at that tantalizing glimpse of starlight. “Keep firing!” he urged Leyoro, despite an almost inaudible whimper of pain from Deanna. Hang on, he told her wordlessly, lending her whatever support his own thoughts could provide. We’re almost out.
A single scarlet beam shot from the saucer’s upper dorsal array. Two hundred and fifty linked phaser emitter segments contributed to the awesome force of the beam, striking out at the enveloping throng of the Calamarain. On the screen, heavy accumulations of ionized plasma steamed away beneath the withering heat of the phaser barrage.
And still the furious cloud kept coming. Despite the unchecked power of the Enterprise’s phasers, a roiling flood of incandescent gas poured over them as fast as Leyoro could boil it off with her phasers, if not faster. Riker couldn’t help being amazed by the sheer immensity and/or quantity of the creature(s) pursuing them; even on full impulse, it was taking several moments to fly clear of them. He felt like he was trying to outrace an animated nebula.
The choppiness of their headlong flight increased every second. Riker was thrown from one side of the chair to the other as he struggled to ride out the violent squall. There was no way he could have shouted out any additional orders even if he had wanted to; it would have been like trying to converse during the downward plunge of a roller coaster. His stomach rushed up into his throat as the Enterprise executed a full 360-degree barrel before stabilizing, more or less, on an even keel.
Additional fires broke out around the bridge, more than the automated system could cope with. Smoke and the smell of burning plastic tickled Riker’s nose. At the operations console, Data dealt with a small blaze swiftly and effectively by opening a flap in his wrist and spraying the flames with some of his own internal coolant. Other crew members followed his example, more or less, by resorting to the handheld fire extinguishers stored beneath each console. Riker took pride in the bridge crew’s performance; they had coped with the outbreak of electrical fires without even a single command from him. You can’t beat Starfleet training, he thought.
Through it all, the baby q appeared to be having the time of his life. He squealed happily as the Enterprise careered through the gap in the Calamarain at close to the speed of light. Defying gravity, the boy turned somersaults in the air, occasionally blocking Riker’s view of the screen. Enjoy this ride while you can, he thought, because we’re not doing this again.
The child’s mother just shook her head in obvious disdain. “Barbaric,” she muttered. “Utterly barbaric.”
Sorry we couldn’t provide a smoother trip, Riker thought sarcastically. Frankly, the female Q’s low opinion of the ship was the least of his concerns.
Instead, his attention was focused on the rapidly shrinking opening ahead of them. He could barely see the stars now, only a small black hole in the substance of the Calamarain that looked scarcely large enough for the Sovereign-class starship to squeeze through. C’mon, he thought, faster, faster, spurring the Enterprise on with his mind even though he knew that they could not possibly accelerate any further without their warp capacity. Would they make it through the gap before it closed entirely? It was going to be close.
Ultimately, the ship tore through the advancing edges of the tunnel, leaving frayed tendrils of glowing mist behind it. Staring at the main viewer, Riker saw a vast expanse of interstellar space, bisected briefly by their own crimson phaser beam before Leyoro ceased fire. For the first time in hours, he could no longer hear the discordant thunder of the Calamarain, although that blessed silence would not last long unless they left their gaseous foes far behind them. Riker didn’t need to see the input from the rear sensors to know that the Calamarain had to be hot on their heels.
“Riker to La Forge,” he ordered, hoping that the damping effect on their warp engines did not extend beyond the boundaries of the Calamarain. “Give me everything you’ve got.”
Sixteen
Years of beaming to and from the Enterprise had accustomed Picard to instantaneous travel. Even so, the ease and speed with which Q switched settings remained disconcerting.
The jade cliffs were gone, replaced by crumbling gray ruins that seemed to stretch to the horizon. Toppled stone columns, cracked and fractured, leaned against massive granite blocks that might once have composed walls. Dry gray powder covered the ground, intermixed with chips of broken glass or crystal. Gusts of wind blew the powder about, tossing it against the desolate landscape, while the breeze keened mournfully, perhaps longing for the bygone days when the ancient structures had stood tall and proud. No sign of life, not even vermin, disturbed the sere and lonely ruins.
What is this place? Picard wondered. That which he saw about him reminded him of what was left of the Greek Parthenon after the Eugenics Wars, except on a vastly larger scale. Piles of stone debris blocked his view in most every direction, but he could tell that the original structure or structures had been huge indeed. The ruins seemed to extend for kilometers. He looked upward at an overcast sky, through which a cool, twilight radiance filtered. If ever a ceiling had enclosed any part of the ruins, no trace of it remained, except perhaps in the hundreds of tiny crystal shards that sparkled amid the dust.
Picard blinked against the wind as it cast the sand into his face, and he stepped behind the shattered stump of a colossal stone column for shelter from the gritty powder. The climate felt different from Tagus III: the air more dry, the temperature cooler, the gravity slightly lighter. He suspected he wasn’t even on the same planet anymore, although his and Q’s latest destination seemed M-class at least. “Where are we now?” he asked Q, who stood a few meters away, heedless of the windblown powder. He was getting damned tired of asking that question, but there seemed to be no way around it. He was merely a passenger on this tour, without even the benefit of a printed itinerary. “And when?”
“Don’t you recognize this place?” Q challenged him. He kicked the gray powder at h
is feet, adding to the airborne particulates. “Surely, a Starfleet officer of your stature has been informed of its existence? We’re still a couple million years in the past, to be fair, but this particular locale looks much the same in your own tiny sliver of history.”
Intrigued despite himself, Picard inspected his surroundings, searching for some clue to his present whereabouts. The sky above was no help; the heavy cloud cover concealed whatever constellations might have been visible from the surface. He contemplated the truncated column before him, running his hand over its classic Ionic contours and leaving a trail of handprints in the dust. The wandering aliens who had once posed as gods to the ancient Greeks had left similar structures throughout the Alpha Quadrant; this could be one of any of a dozen such sites discovered since Kirk first encountered “Apollo” close to a century ago, or another site as yet uncharted by Starfleet. Was Q about to claim kinship to those ancient Olympians who had visited Earth in the distant past? Picard prayed that wasn’t the case. The last thing he wanted to do was give Q credit for any of the foundations of human civilization. If I had to pick Q out of the Greco-Roman pantheon, though, he thought, I’d bet a Ferengi’s ransom that he was Bacchus or maybe Pan.
None of which gave him a clue where in the galaxy he was.
“Stumped?” Q asked, savoring the mortal’s perplexity. “Do let me know if this is too difficult a puzzle for your limited human mind.”
Picard opened his mouth to protest, to ask for more time, then realized he had fallen into playing Q’s game. The fewer minutes we waste, the sooner I’ll return to my ship. “Yes, Q,” he admitted freely. “I’m at a complete loss. Why don’t you illuminate me?” And with all deliberate speed, he added silently.
Q scowled, as if irked by Picard’s ready surrender, but he wasn’t ready to abandon the game just yet. “Perhaps a slight alteration in perspective will refresh your memory.”
Picard felt an abrupt sense of dislocation. His surroundings seemed to rush past him and, in the space of a single heartbeat, he found himself standing elsewhere within the same ruins. He staggered forward, dizzy from the rush, and braced himself against a fragment of a fallen wall. I think I like Q’s usual teleportation trick better, he thought, steadying himself until the vertigo passed. He lifted his gaze from the gravel at his feet—and spotted it at once.
What from the side had appeared to be just more jutting granite rubble was now revealed to be a lopsided stone torus about three meters in diameter. Its asymmetrical design looked out of place among the scattered evidence of ancient architecture. Green patches of corrosion mottled its brownish gray surface, although the torus appeared more or less intact. Q waved at him through the oblong opening at the center of the torus, but Picard was too stunned to respond. Suddenly, he knew exactly where he was.
“The Guardian,” he breathed in awe. He had never seen it in person, but, Q was correct, he was of course familiar with its history. More precisely known as “the Guardian of Forever,” it was the oldest known artifact in the universe, believed to date back at least six billion years. Since its discovery by the crew of Kirk’s Enterprise, the Guardian had been the subject of intensive study by Starfleet yet had remained largely an enigma. Picard glanced about him at the dilapidated stone ruins that surrounded the Guardian; archaeological surveys conducted in his own century had proven conclusively that the crumbling masonry was little more than a million years old. The Guardian predated the other ruins by countless aeons, having already been incalculably ancient before the temples or fortresses that rose up around it were even conceived. Here, he thought, was antiquity enough to daunt even Q…perhaps.
But its age was not its only claim to fame. The Guardian, he recalled, was more than merely an inanimate relic of the primordial past. Although it appeared inactive now, it was supposedly capable of opening up a doorway to any time in history, past or future. Picard briefly wondered if he could use the portal to return to his own era without Q’s cooperation, but, no, that was probably too risky. More likely he would simply strand himself upon an unknown shoal of time with no more appealing prospect than to hope for rescue at Q’s hands. Better to stay put for the time being, he concluded. Matters had not grown that desperate yet.
Brushing the clingy powder from his palms, Picard shielded his eyes with one hand while he scanned the vicinity. He and Q appeared to be the only beings alive in the ruins, excluding the Guardian, which was said to possess at least a pseudo-life of its own. “Shouldn’t we be expecting your younger self any time now?” he asked Q. At this point, Picard felt he had a fairly good idea of the nature, if not the purpose, of their extended trek through time. “That is why we’re here, I assume.”
“A brilliant deduction, Jean-Luc,” Q said, his sarcastic tone belying his words. “Even Wesley could have figured that out by now.” He strutted across the rubble-strewn plain toward Picard, skirting around the Guardian. “But I’m afraid you’re mistaken. My irrepressible earlier incarnation is not coming. He’s already here. He’s been here all along, only not in any form you can perceive.” He pointed at a solitary cornerstone that had survived beyond the edifice it had once supported. “Cast your eyes over there while I adjust the picture for the metaphysically impaired.”
In a blink, another Q, looking not much older than the one who had been so taken by the bloody spectacle at the jade cliffs, appeared, sitting cross-legged atop the great granite block. His chin rested upon the knuckles of his clasped hands as he stared moodily into the empty space within the Guardian. Clad in a stark black sackcloth robe that struck Picard as ostentatiously severe, he presented an almost archetypal portrait of disaffected youth, trapped on the cusp between adolescence and maturity. “A rebel without a cosmos,” the older Q recalled, climbing marble steps that no longer led to anything recognizable. He swept the top step free of dust and sat down a few meters away from Picard. “I really had no idea what to do with myself back then.”
Some of us still don’t know what to do with you, Picard thought, refraining from saying so aloud lest he initiate another pointless war of words. The lighting itself had changed when the young Q became visible, throwing deep red and purple shadows upon the angst-ridden youth and his barren backdrop. Tilting his head back, Picard saw that the sky was now filled with an astonishing display of surging colors that put Earth’s own aurora borealis to shame. Flashes of vibrant red and violet burst like phaser fire through what only moments before had been a dull and lifeless canopy. The dazzling pyrotechnics reminded Picard of the legendary firefalls of Gal Gath’thong on Romulus, but the pulsating, vivid hues above him were, if anything, even more luminous. “What’s happening?” he asked Q. “Where did…that…come from?”
“Now you’re seeing as a Q sees,” the other explained. “What you call the Guardian produces ripples in space-time that extend far beyond this planet’s atmosphere. Think of them as fourth-dimensional fireworks,” he suggested breezily.
The young Q seemed unimpressed by the unparalleled light show unfolding overhead. His gaze fixed straight ahead, he yawned loudly. A listless forefinger traced the outline of the Guardian in the air, and a miniature replica of the stone torus materialized out of nothingness, hovering before his face. Q examined his creation without much enthusiasm. “At least our ancestors made things,” he muttered sulkily.
Atop the immense cornerstone, young Q twirled his index finger and the model Guardian rotated for his inspection. He thrust the single digit into the tiny orifice of his toy and watched sullenly as it disappeared up to the bottom knuckle. Apparently unsatisfied by this diversion, he retrieved his finger, then dispatched the replica back into the ether with a wave of his hand. Leaping impatiently to his feet, his simple sandals kicking up a flurry of dust, he confronted the genuine Guardian. “Show me something!” he demanded.
“WHAT DO YOU WISH TO BEHOLD?” the Guardian asked, hundreds of centuries before it ever spoke to Kirk or Spock, its sonorous voice echoing off the accumulated wreckage of its former housing. An i
nner light flashed with each syllable of its query, rendering the weathered surface of the portal momentarily translucent. Scientists still debated, Picard recalled, whether the Guardian actually possessed sentience or merely a highly sophisticated form of interactive programming. Was it more or less alive, he wondered, than his ship’s computer, the fictional characters that came to life in a holodeck, or even Data? That was a question better suited to philosophers, he decided, than a timelost Starfleet captain.
“Anything!” the young Q cried out in boredom. “Show me anything. I don’t care.”
“AS YOU WISH,” the Guardian replied. A pristine white mist began to descend from the upper arch of the great torus, filling the vortex at its center. Through the falling vapor, Picard glimpsed images appearing, rushing swiftly by like a holonovel on fast-forward. Visions of the past, Picard wondered, or of untold ages to come? Despite the haze produced by the mist, the procession of images summoned up by the Guardian looked more real and tangible than any he had ever seen on a conventional viewscreen. Picard felt he could reach out and touch the people and places pictured therein, then remembered that he probably could. Gaping in amazement, he tried to capture each new vision as it played out before him:
A tremendous explosion cast immeasurable quantities of matter and energy throughout creation; vast clouds of gas collapsed until they ignited into nuclear fire; drifting elemental particles clumped together, forming moons and planets, asteroids and comets; single-celled organisms swam through seas of unimaginable breadth and purity; limbless creatures flopped onto the land and almost instantly (or so it appeared to Picard) evolved into a bewildering variety of shapes and sizes; humanoids appeared, and nonhumanoids, too, creatures with tentacles and feelers and antennae and wings and fins, covered with fur and feathers and scales and slime. Civilizations rose up and collapsed in a matter of seconds; for an instant, Picard thought he spotted the ancient D’Arsay in their ceremonial masks and rites, and then the cascade of history rushed on, leaving them behind. Machines were born, sometimes surpassing their makers, and fragile life-forms dared the void between worlds in vessels of every description, leaving their tracks on a thousand systems before shedding their physical forms entirely to become numinous beings of pure thought. There were the Organians, Picard realized, and the Metrons and the Thasians and the Zalkonians and the Douwd…