Working In Groups

by Alara Rogers

The anti deus ex machina remix of Deja Q. What if the Continuum hadn't interceded after Q's selfless act? Ensemble cast, features thus far Picard, Troi, Wesley, LaForge, Data, and of course Q.

2. Chapter 2

Oddly enough, Q was almost easier to deal with one on one. It wasn't as if his emotions were any less loud, but without an entire roomful of people for him to agitate, there was no feedback loop of negative emotion feeding on negative emotion, spiraling down.

"The thing you have to understand," he said, "is that the Calamarain are absolutely rigid. It's depressing, really, how often species biologically dependent on chaotic systems are completely obsessed with having overly orderly lives. They've got the freedom of all of space to range in, they have no shortage of food, they have almost no natural predators, so of course they had to create problems for themselves with rigid social stratification, obsessive behavior and an inordinate focus on the concept of justice, which, to them, means that anyone they don't like should die painfully- not that humans find that concept alien either, but at least you people are more likely to admit that what you want is revenge."

"What do they want? What do they enjoy? There has to be something we can offer them, to form some basis for negotiation."

"They're fairly self-sufficient. I don't know. About the only thing I can think you might manage is to appeal to that sense of justice and fairness. Even with their arrogance they should be able to grasp that letting several million people die because they want one miscreant's head on a stick - so to speak- can hardly be considered fair and righteous. Unless, of course, they really don't care at all about humanoid life. Which they might not."

They reached the shuttle bay. Q's mouth quirked in an almost-smile. "The shuttle bay. I'm getting that déjà vu feeling all over again."

Troi smiled. It was nice to see that he was capable of having a sense of humor that didn't rely on mocking or humiliating other people. "I hope what we're about to do will be a slightly more positive experience for you than trying to kill yourself."

"It wouldn't be very easy to get worse than that, I admit." He glanced back at her. "Not that being alive as a human is an overwhelmingly wonderful experience, you understand."

"No, but I'm sure such an ancient and intelligent entity as yourself will be able to adapt."

This time his look was sharper. "Are you mocking me, Counselor?"

"Not at all. I'm quite serious. I know it's been hard for you, but you've made a lot of progress in just one day. You were very helpful at that conference back there, you know. The Captain's quite pleased."

One thing about the intensity of Q's emotions- he responded just as strongly to positive feelings as negative ones. All he said was, "Really," with a note in his voice that indicated that he might or might not believe her. What he felt, though, was a burst of brilliant happiness, almost joy. For some reason Q genuinely did seem want the Captain to think highly of him; he'd actually been serious when he'd said that Picard was the closest thing he had to a friend, and Troi was starting to think he'd been serious the last time he'd shown up when he'd wanted to join the crew, too. "I'm getting the hang of this working in groups thing, I think."

"I suppose it helps that 'consultant' is a role in a group that makes you the center of attention."

"Well, it's a good sight better than trying me out in the role of 'trained monkey.'"

They reached the shuttle LaForge had directed them to and climbed aboard. Since Q already had some experience working with force fields from his brief stint in Engineering, he took on the role of setting up the shielding. He worked the controls with sufficient adeptitude and confidence that Troi wondered if knowing how the technology worked was something he carried with him from being omniscient, and if so, why hadn't he carried any knowledge of how to be human? Surely an understanding of how being human worked would have been more relevant to an omniscient being studying humans than a knowledge of human technology would be, and she already knew he couldn't possibly remember everything he had known when he was a Q. It simply wouldn't have fit inside a human brain.

She asked him. "How is it you know how to set up shielding on a shuttlecraft? I can't imagine it would have been very important for an omnipotent being to know to operate our technology."

Q shrugged. "Once Data showed me the basics of how your controls worked, the rest was blatantly obvious to a person of my intellect. Your shields are primitive and pathetic, but once one understands the basic logic behind the design of your controls, it's not hard to figure out how to set them up." He swiveled in his chair. "Computer, pull up human, Vulcan and Betazoid scientific articles on telepathy and send them to this screen here."

"Requested operation will take 97 hours to complete. Specify detailed parameters."

"Damn. Why have you people never invented direct telepathic feeds from your data systems?... Because you're pathetic primitives, that's why. Computer, prioritize anything relating to differential strengths in telepathy, amplifying telepathy, blocking telepathy, or promoting telepathy in non-telepathic species or individuals."

"Acknowledged."

"Why do you need to read our articles? Wouldn't telepathy be something you understand from your experience as a Q?"

"Sure, but I need to know how much you know. The Vulcans won't send us fully working specifications, you know. They'll give us something crippled. I'll need to know the language you people use to describe telepathic operations so I can talk to you, assuming you're of any use whatsoever, and so that I can figure out what the Vulcans left out and put it back in."

"Why would they be so fearful of giving us a telepathic amplifier? With so many lives at stake..."

"The lives at stake is why they'd give us anything at all. I don't think you can overestimate how frightened the Vulcans are of their own technology. Telepathic amplification is to them what genetic engineering is to humans, for much the same reasons. In fact they're so frightened of this stuff that they've actually gone through historical periods of pretending they don't have telepathy, which is rather equivalent to humans of the Victorian era pretending women didn't have orgasms."

"They thought women didn't have orgasms? You're joking."

"Look it up. It's your planet. Well, half your planet anyway."

"I was raised on Betazed, so no, it's my father's planet. But that's shocking. How could they have ever believed such a thing?"

"You'd be amazed what you can accomplish with a little bit of fear, a little bit of shame, the promotion of ignorance and a whole lot of self-righteousness."

"Do the Vulcans have cause to be so afraid?"

"In this case, no. The only thing you'd misuse telepathic amplification for is to invade more people's privacy and violate the sanctity of their minds for your own prurient interests, which is exactly what full Betazoids do anyway so it's not like that would be a big shock to anyone."

"I do not violate people's minds for my prurient interests, Q. It's my job."

"Great, so you're a professional rapist. That really makes me feel so much better."

Troi sighed. "You know, it really doesn't make it any easier to work with someone if you call them a rapist. Particularly when you know perfectly well that that is not what they are."

He turned to look at her. "I know no such thing. In the Continuum, that's exactly what we'd call someone who invaded another Q's mind against their will."

"I'm not invading your mind. You're broadcasting to me. If you insist on using a sexual analogy, then I'll say that I'm not a voyeur, you're the one who's running around naked in front of me. I actually couldn't invade your mind unless you were to form a telepathic link to me first. My empathic powers are completely passive; they're like hearing. I can listen carefully but I can't hear anything someone doesn't say."

"And how do people avoid 'saying' things to you, then?"

"Believe it or not, that is a discipline that can be learned. Captain Picard is fairly good at blocking his emotions from me, and I've met other humans who know how to shield themselves as well. If you'd like, I could teach you how to shield yourself, once this is over. It won't be perfect and it won't stand up to a truly powerful telepath, such as my mother, but I can tell how much you resent having your emotions read, and it's not pleasant for me to deal with any more than it is for you. I'd really rather not hear you if I could avoid it."

He looked at her for a long moment. His face was unreadable, but she sensed disbelief warring with hope. "All right," he finally said. "When we're done with this whole moon thing, you teach me how to shield from you, and then you'll be spared having to deal with my absolute misery at having fallen to this pathetic state."

"That seems fair."

"Find out from Picard if he's made any progress with the Vulcans."

As it turned out, the Captain hadn't, and so she was left with nothing to do but sit in a room with Q, who had something to do and was doing it but was growing painfully impatient with not being able to get started on the actual project. He couldn't keep his mind on his work; he got up, paced, ranted about the idiocy of Vulcans, and generally fretted. It was lunchtime, and it had already been a long day. Troi had a grilled chicken sandwich, a cup of raktajino and a slice of chocolate cake- the first to feed her, the second to keep her energy up, and the third to keep her mood balanced enough so she didn't start shouting at Q. Q demanded the same, discovered he didn't like the sandwich and couldn't stand raktajino, sucked up the cake as if his stomach was hard vacuum, tried the Earl Grey the captain was so fond of, whined that it burned his mouth, got a lukewarm one, drank it, and fifteen minutes later had to be talked through the process of using the bathroom for the first time. Apparently Q had eaten and drunk so little in the past 24 hours that that aspect of biological functioning hadn't come up yet. His disgust translated into a nausea so profound it made Troi queasy, but they both managed to get through it without either of them losing their lunch. Fortunately, while Q was obsessively washing his hands afterward for the fourth ongoing minute, Picard contacted them to send over the specs he had finally managed to cajole out of the Vulcans, and having something concrete to work with finally snapped Q out of his compulsive handwashing fit.

There wasn't much she could do except look over Q's shoulder as he worked. She knew enough about the science behind telepathy that she was able to follow what he was doing, more or less, although she never could have duplicated it. What he was constructing was not a telepathic amplifier per se; it was an artificial telepathy generator, a device that could allow any creature with any baseline level of psi to manifest active telepathic communication with anything that could receive it. She wouldn't be able to read minds any better than she already could, but she'd be able to open a link to a receptive being and communicate with them.

The first model they got out of the replicator, after Q fed in the specs, didn't work at all. It had no unpleasant side effects, it just didn't work. Q speculated that it was too Vulcan-specific still and started making modifications to the specs... and then the collision alert went off.

"Counselor, Q," LaForge's voice came over the comm, "we have incoming. The Calamarain have broken through external shielding. We're compensating now but you're going to have to watch your own shielding."

Q pushed out of the chair. "Take over."

"Why? I don't have a lot of experience with modulating shields, Q."

"Yes, but if they break through I won't be able to do anything about modulating the shields, and I'd rather not lose a minute or so to you trying to squeeze into my seat without getting electrocuted."

He had a point. She sat down and looked over the board. Though she was no expert, she had gone through the required courses at the Academy and had some idea of how to modulate a shield. Still, she'd prefer guidance from an expert. "Geordi, Q's given control of the shielding over to me in case the Calamarain do break through. I might need some details from you on what to do."

"That's fine if we need it. I'll let you know."

She turned in her seat. Q was leaning against a back wall, breathing hard, though not quite hyperventilating. His fear was a living thing, closing her own throat and making her hands tremble. She took a deep breath herself, concentrating on separation disciplines. Q was only human, no greater psi ability now than any human had. At least, so she assumed. She should be able to block him out enough to do what needed to be done. "We'll be all right, Q," she said, as casually as she could. "Geordi's working to get shields back up, and we're behind shields here. You should be fine."

"So you say." He closed his eyes, head leaning back against the bulkhead. "I doubt that sitting around waiting for gruesome death or torment is ever going to be one of my favorite pastimes, though."

"It's not really anyone's favorite pastime. But once you've lived through a number of life-threatening situations, you get used to it. Ensigns on their first mission out after graduating Starfleet Academy are usually every bit as frightened as you are, but they usually have a job to occupy their attention."

"Well, if I keep working and the Calamarain do get through and attack, they're likely to fry any data storage materials I'm touching. Aren't they using radiation? Doesn't that do long-term damage to humans? It'd be just like Crusher not to tell me I'll be dead in half a year anyway from the cell damage or something."

"I think that if you were facing long-term damage, Dr. Crusher would have told you. And I do understand- "

The shuttle rocked hard. Troi spun around in her chair to face the board. "Geordi! Give me a modulation sequence? We're under attack!"

"Try increasing the wave frequency by 5 percent!"

"Increase the wave frequency as much as you can," Q said. "The tighter the frequency the harder it will be for the Calamarain to simply slip through. If they have to batter down the shield, your pals in Engineering will have some time to get the ship's shields back up."

"Geordi, Q says I should increase to maximum because that will make it the hardest for the Calamarain to get through. Does that make sense?"

"No, it'll use up your power curve too quickly. Do what I said, but then continue to steadily increase if it looks like they're getting through."

"What are you powering this thing on, hamster wheels?" Q asked indignantly.

Troi ignored that. She watched the readouts nervously. It looked as if shields were holding, but she was no expert. "Geordi? When are we expecting main shielding to come up?"

"We're working on it. Should be another few minutes."

"Great," Q said. "Peachy." He began to pace in circles in the back of the shuttle. "Can you tell how absolutely thrilled I am with this?"

"Actually, yes, I can, and I wish you would try to calm down. You're not making matters any easier for me."

"Calm down? There are beings trying to kill me and the only thing standing between me and painful death is an incompetent Betazoid who apparently learned how to control shielding from Pakleds!"

"You could take over."

"If this goes on much longer I just might."

The shuttle had been shaking repeatedly as the Calamarain kept attacking the shields. Abruptly the shaking stopped. "Is that good or bad?" Q asked.

"Do we have shields, Geordi?"

"No," LaForge answered, not quite able to hide the irritation in his voice. "Counselor, the moment we have shields back up, I'll let you know."

She sensed an abrupt spike of terror, and swiveled around. The air vent in the back of the shuttle was glowing. "Tell him to hurry," Q said, voice trembling with his fear, "or there won't be much point."

Troi turned back to the board. The link to engineering had died- the Calamarain seemed to be scrambling the comms. Frantically she tried to remodulate the shuttlecraft's shields. The Calamarain seemed to be matching anything she did. In the mirror of the dark viewscreen of the shuttle, she could see the glow ooze out of the air vent and then fly free, aiming directly at Q, who had backed up as far as he could go and was now in the corner. His fear was unbalancing her, making it hard for her to think. Desperately she tried what he'd suggested before, pushing the shielding frequency to maximum. It didn't work.

"Do something!" Q screamed.

"I'm trying!"

She could see the glow envelop Q. He began slapping at it, running his hands over his body as if he were covered with insects. "No- no, stop, get off get off me, stop-"

Nothing was working. She spun in the chair. Q was lifting off the ground, sliding up the bulkhead as if he'd been magnetized to it, kicking frantically. Every instinct told her to try to pull him free, but since doing that had almost killed Data, she knew it wasn't possible. "Q! I tried maximum frequency and they're matching it! Is there anything else I can try?"

Q didn't seem to be able to hear her. His eyes were fixed on the glow around his body, and his cries had stopped being words and had become choked, unintelligible groans. Troi ran over as close as she dared approach and shouted. "Q! The comms are down- if you can't answer me I can't help you!"

He looked at her then. "Ngguh- help- puh- please-"

His voice was strangled. They were probably impairing his breathing. It looked as if they were pushing him into the bulkhead behind him. "I will, but you need to tell me what I can do! I tried maximum frequency and they matched it. What else can I do?"

"Rap- aagh- nuh- rapid- aggh- shifts!"

She turned back to the board, and cycled the frequency down to the lowest it could go, then the highest, then the lowest again, as fast as she could punch the buttons on the board. The glow faded, and she heard a thump and a cry as Q fell.

She ran over to him. "Q!"

"Keep... keep cycling... shields," he mumbled.

"You need help."

"I... need... no more attacks. Keep... cycling. I'll live. I think."

"All right." She went back to the board and kept running the shields through the rapid cycling until the comms came back up a minute later and she heard LaForge's voice.

"We've got shields back up, Counselor."

"Thank God. Let me know if anything more happens." She turned to Q, who had pulled himself to a sitting position and had drawn his knees up to his body, arms wrapped around them and head resting on his knees. He was rocking slightly, his body visibly trembling, and his emotional state was all aftershock, helplessness and exhaustion and a fear that had gone from acute to chronic. She went to him and bent down beside him. "Q? Do you need Dr. Crusher?"

"No," he whispered. "No, I... I've got to keep working or they'll do it again."

"If you need medical help you need to get it before you can get back to work."

"I didn't die the last two times this happened," Q snapped. He struggled to his feet, swayed, and almost fell. Troi offered him support, helping him over to the chair. "Ohhhh... I can't see right. Everything's too bright. My head..."

"You might have a migraine from the attack. I'll get Dr. Crusher."

"No! How many times do I have to tell you? I don't need her. I just... I just have to get over it. You humans deal with things like this all the time."

"We deal with it by getting medical help. Why don't you want me to call Dr. Crusher?"

"Because there's no time! I don't want that to happen again- ever again. I've got to get this thing built so you can talk to them and call them off." He looked up at her, eyes wide. "They're going to attack me again. And again, and again, and you can't protect me forever. I don't- I can't stand it, it hurts. If I have to put up with working while I feel like my eyeballs might explode and drip off my face, to make sure they don't come back..."

"All right. I have some medical training, as a counselor. I'll scan you and if there's any nonprescription medication I can get for you, I will. You can start working again."

She was actually impressed, although she wasn't going to say so. She could fairly easily sense that Q was completely terrorized, as well as in pain. But the fact that he was trying to channel his fear into something constructive, that he was trying to solve his problem instead of just whining about it and expecting other people to save him, was a great improvement from earlier today. Telling Q this, however, was probably a bad idea right now; his mood was extremely dark and his temper on a hairtrigger, and he'd probably take it as patronizing.

When she ran a scan on Q, the basic medical training she had as a counselor told her he was beyond her help. He needed Beverly, whether he wanted to admit it or not. She retreated to the bathroom as Q began working. "Troi to Crusher."

"Crusher here. What's wrong, Deanna?"

"I think Q needs medical attention. We were just attacked by the Calamarain. He's complaining of a migraine headache, and when I scanned him I see definite signs of distended blood vessels in the brain; I think he might be at risk for an aneurysm or a stroke."

"All right, send him up."

"Actually I was hoping you'd come here. Q didn't want to take time from his work to go to Sickbay, and that's an attitude I want to encourage. You'd be very surprised, Beverly; he's been hurt, he's terrified, and yet he's actually managing to channel the fear into doing something useful instead of complaining about it."

"Maybe he's already had a stroke and it's caused a radical personality change."

Troi laughed. "You'd almost think. But no, I think this is genuine. He thinks that the work he's doing is the only thing that will stop him from being attacked again. Since he's essentially right, I don't want to try to talk him into going to Sickbay."

Beverly sighed. "All right. I suppose we don't want him to have a stroke."

"Hippocratic Oath, Beverly," Troi said teasingly.

"Yes, I know. Believe me. But I can't tell you how glad I'll be when he's off this ship and some other doctor's problem."

Q paid no attention as Troi returned, too busy sketching things on a PADD and muttering to himself. However, when Beverly showed up, he immediately looked at Troi accusingly. "I told you I didn't have time for Dr. Crusher's inept ministrations," he snarled.

"Do you have time to have a stroke? Because you could be headed that way," Beverly said acerbically.

He looked up at her, startled. "A stroke? Aren't you overstating the case just a little, Doctor? I wasn't in any danger of having a stroke the last time this happened."

"Actually, you were. I didn't mention it then because it was easily treatable and I didn't want you panicking and hogging attention while I was trying to treat Data."

"Oh, well, that's brilliant, Crusher. Do you withhold critical medical information from all your patients or am I just lucky?"

"Just lucky, I guess," she said dryly, and gave him a hypo to the neck. Q sagged slightly in his chair, the sudden relief of pain washing over his emotional output, calming him.

"Well, that is better. I suppose you're not wholly incompetent."

"I think you'd be dead by now if I were." She turned to Troi. "Any progress?"

"The last one we tried didn't work."

"I've got a new one now," Q announced. "You can try it."

"That quickly?"

"I was close to done with it when the Calamarain showed up and kept me from working. Here." He pulled the device out of the replicator. "Try it."

Troi placed the headband on her head- and immediately screamed. White-hot pain stabbed through her head like shards of jagged light. She ripped the headband off and dropped it to the floor, fingers suddenly nerveless.

"Well, that looks like we're on the right track," Q said.

"On the right track? Q, that hurt."

"Yes, I guessed that from all the screaming." He picked up the headband. "But since the last one did nothing, this may be some improvement. Let's check to be sure it's actually affecting your telepathy in some way." He put it lightly on his own head, and his face screwed up slightly as if in concentration or perhaps mild pain. "I'm guessing, due to my lack of desire to shriek and throw this, that the headache it's giving me is considerably less than the one it was giving you." He took the headband off and handed it toward Beverly. "Dr. Crusher. You're undoubtedly an expert on headaches, being a working mom to a wunderkind and all. Perhaps you'd like to try it. Purely in the interests of science, of course."

"Why would I need to try it?" Beverly asked warily.

"Because I'm trying to figure out whether it caused dear Deanna such excruciating pain by affecting her telepathy, or if it does that to everyone. It's hurting my head, but I just apparently had a narrow escape from a migraine-induced stroke, and besides I have too little experience with pain to be able to say whether this is mild or severe. And as a former Q, for all I know I have some kind of holdover telepathic sensitivity anyway. So that doesn't prove much."

Beverly took the band and put it on. "I don't... no, there it is, I feel it. I'm getting a very mild headache, sort of like eyestrain. Is that what you felt, Deanna?"

"No, mine was more like shards of glass being stuck through my eyes."

"Very good. It's working. Just a little fine-tuning needed."

"Q, if that was working..."

"Oh, it's not supposed to hurt that much if it works properly, Deanna. Don't be such a wuss."

The notion of Q telling her not to be such a wuss was so staggering in its hypocrisy and inappropriateness that Troi could only stare at him, gaping. "I can see learning what pain feels like hasn't improved your compassion any," she finally managed to say.

"I really wouldn't be going around calling other people wusses if I were you, Q," Beverly said. "Pot? Kettle? Black?"

"Well, yes, kettle, I freely admit that I'm blacker than thou, but you're supposed to be used to it. And no, I'm not without compassion. I didn't say we would use the device in its current condition. I also, in case you didn't notice, tried it on myself after you started the hysterical screaming and writhing. So if I want to call you a wuss I will. Wuss."

"I guess it takes one to know one?" Beverly asked.

"Crusher, why don't you go away and let me work? I can't concentrate with your inane blathering."

Beverly looked at Troi with a frankly disbelieving look on her face and an emotional makeup part disbelief, part being appalled. Troi shrugged, smiling sympathetically. It wasn't as if she could do anything about the basic fact that Q was an ass. Although she'd noticed him being much more dismissive of and nasty to Beverly than to Troi herself, and she couldn't figure that out. He'd put her on trial in their first encounter and then she hadn't been here for the time he tempted Will with omnipotence, and he'd ignored her last time, and this time he'd accused her of mentally raping him. From all she knew, he had had no dealings with Beverly at all the first time, ignored her the time he came for Will, and she hadn't been here at all during the Borg thing the last time. He really had had very few dealings with her at all, so why was he so much more irritated with her and so much more ready to turn the full force of his vicious tongue on her than he was with Troi? It didn't entirely make sense. True, Troi had just saved his life, but then, Beverly had done that three times today.

Beverly left. Q continued to work, and recruited her to try two more versions of the device- one which didn't cause pain per se, but made her perceptions so sensitive that she almost collapsed from suddenly sensing everyone on the ship, and one which, apparently, inverted her powers so that she started broadcasting her emotions at Q, who found the experience disconcerting- before they got one that appeared to work. She successfully managed to send a test message to Q. The Calamarain had tried to break the Enterprise's exterior shielding in this time period, but hadn't succeeded. It was 1330 hours, three and a half hours after they'd begun work, and Troi was exhausted from the strain on her powers, despite the third cup of raktajino today. The caffeine was making her jittery, and Q's nervousness wasn't helping.

"If you think we're ready, we should do this."

"What if you can't actually use it to communicate with the Calamarain? We'd be letting them in- we won't have a chance to kick them back out again if it turns out negotiations fall apart."

"I think we have to take that risk, Q. We know we can't hold them off indefinitely."

"But they might not even listen to you. They're generally contemptuous of your form of life. Even if you can talk to them-"

"Q, we've been through this. If they won't listen, we'll have Geordi listening in on the comms, and he'll be able to re-tune the shields to force them back out. But we have to at least try negotiating with them- right? Didn't you say that?"

"Yeah, but..."

"It's perfectly natural to be afraid. But if this isn't going to work we need to know that as quickly as possible."

He sagged in his chair, leaning forward on the console and propping his forehead up with his hand, elbow on the console. "Yeah. Yeah, I know. Just... do it. Go ahead. Tell LaForge."

She commed LaForge. "We're ready. I'm going to leave this comlink open, so you can reset the shields if things go wrong."

"Good thinking, Counselor. Ready when you are."

"Now."

The ship shook, once, and then the glow reappeared on the surface of the darkened viewscreen. Q pushed back from the console, backing up. With the device on her head, Troi spoke out loud to help her focus the outward communication. "Wait!"

/::impatience::/why wait?/trick the chaos-bringer is trying to trick us/a trap!::fear/anger::/

"No! This isn't a trick- I want to talk to you. I want to understand why you're doing this."

/no need to talk/no need to understand/the chaos-bringer is there! destroy it!/::disbelief::/what is this thing? why is it talking to us?/wants to understand/understand what? what can it understand?/

"I want to understand why you want to kill the Chaos Bringer. Can you explain what he's done?"

/::hate::it destroys/brings chaos/disrupts the PROPER ORDER OF THINGS!/not just, not fair, not right!/it must die it must die/::anger/vengeance::/

"He can certainly be disruptive, but why does he deserve to die just for disrupting the proper order of things? Surely such intelligent beings as yourself can restore order-"

/doesn't understand it doesn't understand/can't understand! it's a thing/why are we even wasting our time?/

Her head pounded. The chorus of voices in her head shouted their need for vengeance, their disdain for her. "Listen to me! The being you call the Chaos-Bringer is trying to save a planet with several million people on it! Surely justice would demand that you allow him to make that attempt-"

/millions of meat things? who CARES?/::IMPATIENCE::/Justice demands we destroy the chaos-bringer!/right there, vulnerable, trapped in meat/afraid oh yes taste its fear/it must be DESTROYED!/now now NOW/

"Please wait! Isn't there any recompense we can arrange? Anything that can be done to repay you for what he's done?"

/it must die/death! death will wash away the disorder/restructure/free us from the chaos it has brought!/the legacy haunts us still/

"I understand your desire for justice and your need to balance the scales, but there are millions of lives at stake. If we need to divert our resources to protecting him from you so he can work on stopping Bre'el IV's moon from falling, then we won't-"

/you things are PROTECTING it?/::rage::/we have told you what it's done! we have told you what we require!/

"No, you haven't told me what he's done, except in the most general sense, and we can't surrender someone to be killed just because he's accused of fomenting chaos!"

/::RAGE::/you protect it/::FURY::/you will share its fate!/kill/kill/kill them all/kill the meat creatures/

"You don't need to kill anyone! We can come to some sort of understanding if you'd just talk-"

And then the glow was on her. It felt like a thousand tiny insects made of sparks, as if fireflies actually gave off fire and were crawling all over her skin. She yelped, startled.

"Good going, Troi! Give me that-" She felt Q grab the band off her head. Troi stumbled, lurching. She caught herself up against the chair, realized the glow was no longer touching her or burning her, and turned.

Q had put on the headband and was completely encircled in the glow, his eyes closed, his face drawn in an expression of intense concentration. Although the glow surrounded him, it wasn't actually touching him. She could no longer "hear" the conversation without the amplifier on her head; all she could get was Q's emotional state, and the faintest resonant echo of communication, like hearing a conversation through a thick bulkhead. She got that he was communicating faster than she had been- perhaps as a former entity of pure thought, he was adept enough at communicating without words that even with the handicap of a human brain he didn't actually need to voice his side of the conversation and could "speak" at the speed of thought.

At first she sensed nothing but desperation and resolve. She went to the shielding, hands hovering over the controls, prepared to begin the rapid shifts in shielding if they tried to attack. Q's desperation grew more acute, shading into panic, his emotional state becoming more and more frantic. The Calamarain still circled him without closing in, so she didn't try resetting the shields. She couldn't imagine how he could be negotiating with them when they wouldn't even talk to her- what would they say to him, besides chanting at him that he needed to die? But they hadn't attacked yet. He must be getting somewhere. At least he must be holding them off. But the panic grew, resonating in the small room until it took all her control not to scream in terror and run. Her hand on the shielding controls trembled; her heart pounded until her vision swam. Despair overwhelmed her, and though she knew it wasn't her own emotion she couldn't blot it out.

And then everything stopped.

For just a moment, she couldn't feel anything at all from Q. It was as if the panic had shut off, like he'd thrown some sort of mental switch. But it wasn't any kind of mental shield- in the quiet that followed, she began to be able to "hear" other emotions. Exhaustion- emotional exhaustion, not physical. Resignation. Grief and fear, muted by the exhaustion and resignation. And something else, something almost- tender? protective? Possessive-protective. Something was his and he would defend it.

The Calamarain drained away, the glow drawing back into the walls. Q swayed on his feet. Troi went to him, catching him and helping him to a chair again. He took the headband off and dropped his hands to the console. They were shaking, and he studied them with interest, some sort of numbness and dissociation spreading through his emotional state so that the fact that his hands were trembling seemed to actually surprise him somehow. Or maybe everything surprised him. Maybe being alive surprised him.

"What happened?" Troi asked him. "What did you say?"

"Give me a minute," he said, his voice hoarse.

She went and got him a drink of water. Sipping at it seemed to calm him somewhat, as she'd hoped it would do. She got a mug of hot chocolate for herself and sipped that, running through her distinction disciplines, letting the outside emotions drain out of her. It helped that Q was almost numb. She couldn't tell if that was a good thing or not. Dissociation after a traumatic event was over was not uncommon, but she sensed no feeling of relief from Q, only weary resignation and resolve. Whatever this was, it wasn't over.

She waited for him to speak. He finished the glass of water, and pushed the empty glass around on the console idly for about half a minute before finally looking up at Troi. There was a smile on his face, an almost perfect lie. A human might never have caught him out, but there was nothing she could sense in his emotional state consistent with that beaming smile.

"Well! Despite your utter incompetence at negotiating, I seem to have saved the day. The Calamarain won't be bothering you again. You're free to go about your petty little rescue mission."

"We are? What about you?"

"It's not my rescue mission. I'm simply graciously helping you out because otherwise Picard would have left me in the brig."

"So what did you promise them?"

"Nothing anyone's going to have any difficulty doing without, I assure you. I managed to convince them that it would, after all, be the height of unfairness to let several million innocent mortals die because of their quest for justice, and that killing me would make it quite impossible for you to save those people given how stupid you all are."

His emotions had absolutely nothing to do with his insulting words. She sensed another wave of that protective/possessive tenderness from him, and grief, and acceptance/resignation, numbing the grief down. "They didn't seem to me to have any interest in preserving those lives."

"That's because they look at you as roughly equivalent to an insect. Despite my reduced state, I am at least a being they can respect. Despise, perhaps, but respect. When I realized they were attacking you, I figured that I was going to need to step in and try to close the deal before you got the whole ship destroyed with your incompetence."

"If they wouldn't listen to me because I'm an insect, then it was hardly my incompetence, Q. It was their bigotry."

He waved a hand airily. "Details."

And he had successfully sidetracked her with an insult. "What exactly did you offer them, Q?"

"Nothing important."

"Yes, you said that, but what?"

"Troi, I assure you. The Calamarain will do nothing to harm you, or this ship, or any of its crew, or any other ship in the area, or the people in the Bre'el system. It's all taken care of. Now if you don't mind I'd like to get back to engineering."

"I do mind. I want to know what you offered them. I'm going to have to report the result of the negotiations to the captain, and I need to know exactly what it was."

Q made a face. "It's embarrassing. I don't want to talk about it." Grief, self-pity. Protectiveness. Resignation. Numbness.

"But I need to know. Unless you'd rather I put on the headset and tried to talk to the Calamarain again."

Alarm. "No, no, that's hardly necessary. I'll have to perform some sort of stupid, humiliating propitiating ritual in three days. For which I absolutely demand complete privacy, by the way, it's bad enough I have to humiliate myself to protect Picard's little tugboat without you people witnessing my humiliation." Fear. Self-pity. Resignation, leading to the numbness again.

He was lying. His emotional state was completely inconsistent with what he was telling her. She studied him, eyes narrowed, wondering if she should call him on it.

But if she did, he'd probably make up some other, somewhat more plausible story. There was only one person on this ship he might possibly tell the truth to, only one person he had any emotional vulnerability to. Only Captain Picard had any hope of getting the truth out of Q if Q was determined to lie. And really, the façade he was putting up was quite amazing. The waves of grief and despair that kept randomly surfacing and hitting him would have most people fighting off tears. Q had molded his face into a perfect semblance of sarcastic, flippant invulnerability. Without her empathic powers she'd never have known he was lying.

"All right," she said. "Go on to Engineering, and I'll report to the captain."

Although it was very late, she was sure Picard would still be awake. She commed him as Q left. "We're done, Captain. The negotiations are completed; apparently the Calamarain will leave us alone for at least three days."

"Very good, Counselor. What happens in three days?"

"That's a good question, sir. I'd like to talk to you about that."

"All right. I'm in my ready room. Come on up."

"On my way."

---

"Lying." Picard turned the word over in his mouth. Well, the notion of Q lying, about anything, hardly came as a shock, but he'd hoped the entity- the man, now, presumably, if he wasn't somehow managing to lie about that- had been starting to improve his behavior. He supposed it was too much to hope for to get complete reform within a single day. "What part is he lying about?"

"I'm not sure. His emotional state largely consisted of despair, resignation and self-pity. Either he wasn't successfully able to make any sort of bargain with the Calamarain and they left for other reasons, or whatever he's offered them isn't simply to perform a ritual for them in three days. He also said that he convinced the Calamarain that letting millions of people die to pursue him was a bad idea- but when I tried to tell them the same thing, they were completely dismissive of the concept. They didn't care at all. It's as if I'd said that building a house might kill thousands of blades of grass. They were, in fact, hostile to the whole notion that they should care about the lives of... meat creatures, I think is the best way to describe what they called us. And I don't see how Q, who they hate enough to want to kill, could have persuaded them to change their minds when they had such incredible disdain for the idea when I presented it."

"Do you think he's hiding some sort of threat to the crew? Or to the people of Bre'el IV?"

Troi considered. "What he specifically said to me was that the Calamarain would not harm... what were his exact words... this ship, or any of its crew, or any other ship in the area, or the people in the Bre'el system. And I didn't get the feeling that he was being dishonest. There's a specific emotional state associated with the act of telling a lie- it's what the old 23rd century lie detectors used to pick up on, until we realized that Vulcans could subvert them any time they wanted to and sociopaths didn't feel the emotion in question. I didn't get that sense from Q- the 'I am lying' sense- until he said he would have to perform a ritual for them in three days. But his whole performance, the display he showed of his emotional state, was a complete lie. Now, it's not the first time he's done that- Q's spent the last two days or so trying to conceal his emotions with varying degrees of success- but it was incredibly thorough and much more of a drastic change than being frightened and pretending he's just irritated. He was smiling at me, and the whole time he was alternating between complete numbness and overwhelming despair. That's too different to simply mean he was trying to hide his feelings; he was actually trying to lie about them. And if I hadn't been an empath it would have worked."

"Picard to Q."

The com badge said in Q's voice, "What is it, Jean-Luc? I'm kinda busy here."

"Really. What are you up to?"

"I'm in engineering. Data and I are trying to figure out how to build an artificial wormhole with stone knives and bearskins."

"Well, you'll have to put it on hold. I want to see you in my ready room. Now."

"What for?"

"Q, if you genuinely want to work with this crew, then when I, as the captain of this vessel, tell you to do something, you don't ask 'what for.' You do it."

Theatrical sigh. "Fine, fine. I'm coming. But if this means we don't manage to figure out how to beam the people off Bre'el III in time and as a result they all die, you can take the blame, not me."

The link went silent. "Do you want me to be here when you talk to him, Captain?" Troi asked.

"Oh, by all means, Counselor. Please do stay." His anger was cold, and hard, and perhaps out of place. Had he really begun to expect something better of Q? Really he shouldn't be angry at anyone but himself, for actually having begun to believe in the creature. And yet he couldn't be rid of it. Q had disappointed him, and he wasn't sure why that mattered when he really should have known better than to expect anything of Q in the first place, and yet it did matter and he was angry. Why had Q lied? What was he hiding?

---

When Q arrived, he looked visibly exhausted - dark circles under his eyes, his movements slower than normal, as if he'd never slept last night - which might in fact be the case, for all Picard knew - but he smiled jauntily at Picard as if the prospect of a conversation with Picard perked him up. Picard didn't know whether that was true, or part of the façade - it was impossible to tell what Q was thinking or feeling when he spent so much time using his body language to lie. "What can I do for you, mon capitaine?"

"You can explain what it is that you really offered the Calamarain, to begin with," Picard said. He gestured with a slight nod at Troi. "Counselor Troi tells me that you claimed you had driven them off by offering to perform a propitiating ritual."

"Yes, that's what I said. Did you call me here just to ask me questions I already answered for Troi? Do you actually want all those people on Bre'el III dead, or are you just that stupid?"

"Actually, I wanted to know why you lied to her."

Q's eyes widened, his body visibly growing tenser. Troi said, "Q, I could tell that your emotional state was completely inconsistent with what you were telling me. People who merely have to perform a ritual in three days don't suffer grief and despair over it."

"I told you to stop doing that!" Q snarled at her.

"Q, telling me when someone is lying is the Counselor's job, and she is hardly going to refrain from it because being caught out offends your sensibilities," Picard said sharply. "It sounds to me as if perhaps you didn't actually accomplish what you set out to do." He leaned forward. "You said the Calamarain were no longer a danger. Was that a lie, too?"

"No!" Q slammed his hands down on Picard's desk. "I don't care what Troi told you, but I will not tolerate this second-guessing any longer! I did what I had to do to protect your precious ship, and if you don't believe me-"

"What did you have to do, then?" Picard snapped. "If you protected the ship, what part were you lying about?"

"You don't even have any reason to think I lied to you except that that- that mind-rapist over there told you I did! And she only wishes she were a real telepath, Picard, she doesn't know me, she doesn't know what I'm thinking and she does not know what arrangements I made with the Calamarain! So how, exactly, could she possibly know if what I told her was true or not?" He leaned forward in Picard's face. "No one you care about is endangered any longer," he spat out. "Your ship, your crew, the people on the planet, the Kaeloids, the Ferengi, the one-celled nanoreplicators of Tamora Prime, everyone you give a damn about is going to be perfectly okay, as long as you let me get back to my job so we might have some hope of getting all those people off Bre'el III before their moons crash. I don't see why anything else matters to you!"

"What. Did. You. Promise. The Calamarain?" Picard enunciated each word, trying to control his own anger. He hadn't expected this childish outburst; usually, when he called Q on a lie or an evasion, Q admitted it. This attempt to blame Troi for catching him out was extraordinarily irritating.

"None of your business! I told you, nothing you care about will be harmed! What more do you need to know?"

"He's sincere," Troi reported, "but I am also sensing great bitterness and self-pity from him, as well as anger."

And abruptly it clicked; the repetition of the concept that nothing he cared about would be harmed, and the understanding that Q was emotionally an adolescent, and Troi's report of the emotions she was sensing, all came together to one conclusion. Picard let out his breath in a controlled, aggravated sigh. "Oh, I see. You've taken it on yourself to martyr yourself again, haven't you? Our earlier discussion meant nothing to you; once again you assumed you had to solve everything yourself, once again you could come up with no better idea than throwing your life away. Only this time you knew I wouldn't stand for it, so you lied about it. You need to stop indulging this childish martyrdom complex of yours, Q!"

Q's face went white. "You-" He spluttered, obviously unable to come up with something to say- or perhaps too upset to be able to speak. "You-"

"No, Q, you've had your say! I do not want any more excuses, any more prevarications. You will-"

"Forget it," Q interrupted. "Just forget it. I'm not listening to you. I don't care anymore. Let your ship be destroyed. Let them all die on that planet. I'm not helping you, I'm not listening to you, you can just throw me in the brig and I'll wait for us all to be annihilated! Because that's what you obviously want!" He had started at a normal volume for an interruption, but by the time he was done, he was shouting. He spun on his heel and headed for the door.

"Q!" Troi said, starting toward him.

"You know what, Counselor? I'm so glad you're going to die with me. You can't imagine how happy it makes me to know that when the Calamarain blow this ship to bits, you're going with me. Because you are a despicable, animal, filthy waste of DNA and if you dare speak to me again, I can't promise I won't hit you."

Troi stepped back as if Q had brandished a weapon at her, eyes going wide and skin paling. Picard almost summoned Security to take Q back to the brig, then. The sheer vitriol of the attack on Troi for doing her job enraged him. But sending Q to the brig wouldn't stop the complete collapse of this situation, and the truth was there were people on Bre'el III who might need Q's expertise to survive. He needed to reassert some control. "Q!" he shouted, intending to demand an apology.

"What?" Q snarled, without turning around.

"Look at me!" Picard ordered.

"Or what, you'll throw me in the brig? I told you already I'm not listening to you! Go ahead, throw me in the brig, throw me out an airlock for all I care, I'm not lifting a finger for you people anymore! I just don't care!"

There was something that sounded odd in Q's voice, a strain Picard hadn't expected. He took a deep breath. "Counselor, you're dismissed." He wasn't going to get anywhere with Q with Q's fury at Troi for exposing him clouding the issue.

"Yes, sir." Troi hesitated only a moment, then turned and left the room. Q was still standing there, near the door but not close enough to trigger it himself, still facing away from Picard. Picard walked over to him.

"Q. Look at me."

"No." This close, he could see that Q was shaking.

Rather than make another demand Q would refuse, he simply walked around Q and looked up at the man's face. To his shock, he could see that Q's face was streaked with tears, his lips trembling, his shoulders shaking. He glared furiously at Picard, but the effect was rather ruined by the tears spilling out of those glaring eyes. Picard had thought, from the odd note in Q's voice, that there might be something beyond simple fury, but he hadn't expected full-blown tears. Not from Q. The thought occurred to him for a fraction of a second that this might be a manipulation, but he immediately dismissed it. He remembered being a young boy, a teen barely out of childhood, driven to tears by his older brother's taunts, hating his brother and hating himself for being so weak as to show tears. Q would never cry as a manipulation tactic; it was far too much a display of weakness, too far from the image Q tried to present of himself.

The anger left Picard then in a sigh. Without quite wanting to, he felt a great deal of sympathy for Q. From his own experience in trying to maintain a controlled image, he knew Q would not cry unless he was so overwhelmed that he couldn't help himself, and that it had to be hurt, not mere anger, triggering this. Q had no problems displaying anger - Picard was certain it would take more than simple rage to break him down like this.

"Sit down, Q," he said, gently this time.

"Why?" Q demanded. His voice was belligerent, but the crack in it from repressed sobs had gotten much more noticeable.

"Because we need to talk." He took a deep breath. "I'm sorry."

"You're sorry? You're sorry?" Q spun on his heel again, this time heading back into the room since Picard was between him and the door. "I offered to die for you people! I d-didn't want it, I tried everything else, I tried, but it was the only thing- the only thing-"

And then he collapsed to the floor, kneeling, arms clutched tightly around himself, rocking. Small animalistic noises escaped him, only the kind of nasalized sounds that could be made when no air was escaping or entering one's lungs. Picard walked over to him and half-knelt by him, putting a hand on his shoulder. "Breathe," he suggested. "Just take deep breaths."

"I c-can't!" Q looked up at Picard, eyes wild. "What's hap- happen-ning to. Me?"

"You're crying," Picard said, trying not to sound patronizing. He doesn't know anything about being human, he reminded himself again.

But his assumption that Q didn't know the basics turned out to be wrong. "I kn-know that!" Q screamed. "Why - why c-can't. I brea- breathe?" He turned his head back to face the floor, his fists on the floor, clenching tightly.

"It's normal," Picard said. "Your body is trying to control your lungs without your volition involved, and you're fighting it. You won't let yourself sob if you can avoid it, but you can't make your lungs breathe normally, either. You need to let go." He shook his head slightly. "I understand why you're fighting it, but I don't think you can, yet. Not successfully. Don't fight."

"An-and what? Bawl hys-teric-terically on your floor. Like a ch-child? I. Don't th-think so!"

"Q, you've been human for only slightly over 24 hours, you're probably overtired and underfed and obviously stressed to your limit, and you don't know how to control this body as well as you might like yet. It's all right. No one else can see you, and I will not think less of you."

"Is that p-possible? Cou-could you think less. Of me? Does the s-scale go below ze-zero?"

Picard winced slightly. "I suppose I deserved that," he said quietly. "But things have changed since this morning. I am sorry for the conclusions I jumped to. And no, I do not think that little of you. Perhaps that was why I was so angry when Counselor Troi told me you'd lied. For some reason I thought better of you."

"I. D-didn't lie. Ab-about. Any-thing im-portant, Pi-card." Q turned his tear-streaked face to look at Picard. "I said. I'd k-keep every-thing. You care-cared about. Safe. And I di-did. Didn't lie ab-out that."

"You're assuming that I have no concern whatsoever for your life. And that is not true."

"Yes, it is!" Q wrenched his head away and shook it violently. "I'm not- not one of y-you. It's ob-vious. Your p-precious eth- ethics won't let you sac-rifice me, but. It's not like you. C-care. I don't be-long."

His sobbing was easing up slightly, giving him just a little bit more freedom to talk. Picard stood up and went to the replicator. "Iced chamomile tea, two sugars." Though he couldn't know for sure - certainly the things Q'd devoured in the conference room weren't exactly dessert food - Picard thought Q would appreciate sweetened iced tea rather more than unsweetened, though he himself found the concept of sweetened tea to be something of an abomination. He brought the tea over to Q. "Here. Drink this slowly."

"What is th-this ob-session pe-people have for making me d-rink things?"

"A drink is calming, and it will help you regulate your breathing."

For a moment Q looked as if he would refuse. But he moved to a chair and sat down rather than continuing to kneel on the floor, and he took the glass and drank from it in huge gulps, which, predictably, led him to start hiccupping. Controlling the urge to sigh, Picard went to the replicator and ordered up a hiccup regulator, which he handed to Q. "Put this on your chest. It'll stop the hiccups."

Q gave him a truly poisonous look, but obeyed. After a moment or two, the hiccups stopped. Since the hiccups had already disrupted the sobs, Q's breathing was now ragged but more or less under control. "What new hideous human frailty is this?"

"It's called hiccups," Picard said dryly, sitting down at his desk.

"Oh. Yeah. I always thought those looked incredibly stupid. I didn't realize how annoying they were for the person suffering from them, though." He took a sip from the drink. "You said you wanted to apologize. Now that I can breathe properly, you can get on with it any time you like, you know."

"I believe I already did. I jumped to conclusions about your motives, because hearing that you were not being truthful with Counselor Troi predisposed me to think the worst of you. And I apologize for that." Picard steepled his hands on his desk. "But you had better explain to me what is actually going on, and what you really negotiated with the Calamarain. The truth, this time."

"How will you know I'm telling the truth without your mind-rapist to tell you?"

"I like to think that if I ask you to be honest with me, you'll try."

"Whereas I wouldn't try if you didn't ask."

"It does seem that you operate on the principle that anything not explicitly forbidden is permissible."

A wry smile tugged at Q's mouth for a moment. "I suppose that's not entirely inaccurate." He put the drink down on the desk and began to pace Picard's office. "I did warn you, you know. I said it was possible we wouldn't have anything they wanted. Maybe you could have worked your magic with them with one of those wonderful speeches of yours, if you could have talked to them, which you couldn't. But Troi didn't get anywhere with them. In fact she told them you were protecting me, and right after that they attacked her, which doesn't say much for her negotiating skills. I thought... well, I thought I couldn't do worse than that."

"How were you able to talk to them? You're not telepathic, I presume."

"No, but I know how to do it. The device I built creates artificial telepathy. If you had experience with telepathic transmissions you might have been able to talk to them, but there wasn't time for you to learn." Now that he'd gotten himself back under control, Q showed no sign in his voice or his body language that he'd just been crying hysterically - only the marks of tears still streaking his face and his reddened eyes gave him away. "The trouble wasn't talking to them. The trouble was what to say. I tried to find out what they wanted, aside from my death, and as I suspected, there wasn't much of anything really. I tried persuading them that it would be hardly just to let millions of mortals die because of their desire for justice, but they said that would be on my head for not surrendering myself. I tried to point out that being sentenced to mortality by my own people meant I'd already been punished for the crimes I committed, against them or anyone else, and they said that they wouldn't acknowledge any punishment short of my death to be sufficient. I..." A slight tremor came back into his voice, and he looked away. "I humiliated myself totally, actually. Guinan would've been delighted."

"Guinan does not seem to me to be the sort of person who takes pleasure in the humiliation of others."

"And you've known her how long? Thirty years, tops? You don't know her like I do. She told me earlier today, right before the Calamarain first attacked... that I'd better get used to begging. So I tried it, I mean, I didn't have much to lose, aside from my dignity and after everything that's happened I think that's gone." He shook his head. "That didn't work either."

"And yet you're here alive, and they've gone. What did you promise them?"

Q took a deep breath. "I... You know I mentioned they have this overblown sense of justice. Well, one thing they like to have, they like to have criminals accept and acknowledge the, uh... righteousness of the punishment. Declare mea culpas and publicly accept their punishment, that kind of thing. The Calamarain can force that on each other - one of the reasons I picked them out to, uh, torment in the first place, I find that behavior quite disgusting. They essentially, um... how do I put this... they can override what an individual Calamarain in the swarm thinks by imposing groupthink on them. It's an ability the Q have, collectively, and we don't use it on each other... which, I suppose, is why I'm here as myself and not still part of the Continuum as a good, law-abiding little zombie Q, but whatever. The point is, they can't make me accept my punishment. They can kill me, but they can't get me to acknowledge to them that I deserve it... because I don't, but that's beside the point, I could lie about it if I felt like it. I could say what they want me to say, I just won't. And they can't make me. Unless they give me something to make it worth my while. So."

"You offered... to publicly acknowledge your crimes?"

"I offered to publicly attest and affirm that I admit to my crimes and acknowledge that I deserve to be executed for them. Which I don't. But I can lie about it. They can—if they're in physical contact with me, with any being made of flesh, they can read my surface thoughts. It's how they identified me when I was asleep, with the probe - if I'd been awake maybe I could have misdirected them, I don't know. But in any case, I can communicate with them even without the device, at a surface level, if they're touching me, which they have to be to kill me. And I agreed that I'd make that acknowledgement for them, if they gave me three days to try to help you people with the moon thing."

"I thought you said it would take five days."

"They wouldn't go for five days. They were only willing to give me three. I told them their choices were, I voluntarily surrender myself in three days and give them their acknowledgement, or we put the shields back up and I talk you into fighting them, and with my help, you actually might be able to destroy them, and even if they end up destroying us all they wouldn't get my acceptance under any circumstances. They didn't really believe me that you'd be able to successfully fight them off - to be honest, I'm not sure I believe me, because I don't think you'd be ruthless enough until it was too late—but they want the acknowledgement almost as badly as they want me dead. So. In three days I go out to them and they— and three days should be long enough that you won't need my advice anymore." He plopped himself back down on the desk. "Is that what you wanted to know? Can I go now? My time, you understand, has gotten very short."

"I would rather that you didn't, just yet." Picard pushed back very slightly in his chair, letting his hands rest in his lap, watching Q. "I understand why you made the bargain that you did with the Calamarain, now. But I don't understand why you lied to Counselor Troi about it. Was it too much a violation of your image? Too much of a blow to your reputation as the 'bad boy' of the galaxy to admit that you had agreed to sacrifice yourself to buy us time? You'd already done it once before; I'd think the damage to your reputation was done."

Q shook his head. "What does my reputation have anything to do with anything? I told you already, I'm human now. I want to be part of you. But you don't want any part of me. Why should I have told Troi anything, and put up with her insulting psychobabble, and you... you'd have done exactly what you just did. It's bad enough I'm dying for you, not to mention losers who can't even move their own moon; I was supposed to be eager to hear you belittling me for it, claiming I'm doing it for attention? If Troi hadn't been prying where she wasn't wanted, you'd never have known until it was done and then I'd never have had to hear your sanctimonious prattle and your insults."

"And we would never have been able to help you, and your death would be inevitable."

"My death is inevitable. Aside from it being a condition of mortality anyway, what part of I have three days to live did you not understand?"

"The part where the trickster, the liar, the man who thrives on chaos and misdirection, feels honor-bound to carry out a surrender to an execution he doesn't believe he deserves, if there is any other way whatsoever." Picard stood. "Q, I confess this is never a position I expected to find myself in, but... you do not have to follow through on a bargain you were coerced into making. If I'm understanding you correctly, what you said was the only thing you could say to keep from being killed right then and there."

"Am I getting this properly? You're telling me to go back on the word I gave? Hello, what species are you really and what did you do with the real captain?"

Picard smiled slightly. "It does seem ridiculous. But that is what I'm saying. Talk to us. Let us help you. Let us find another way. If it comes to it... given a choice between protecting a being who has twice tried to sacrifice himself to save others, and honoring the judicial system of beings that consider us less than insects and don't think twice about the fact that their 'justice' may kill millions of innocent sentients... we would fight to protect you. You have your own issues with your superiority complex and your overweening arrogance, but you've shown a willingness to change and grow. They haven't."

"I love how 'willingness to change and grow' is synonymous in your mind with 'willing to act like a human'. And you call me arrogant."

"All right, then, you've shown a willingness to try to learn what it means to be human. Perhaps in the past you might have been as cavalier about the death of millions as the Calamarain are, but here and now, you care enough to give up your life to save them. Perhaps it is arrogant or ethnocentric of me, but I do not believe morality is situational and changes from species to species. Honoring the rights of sentient beings to live and be free is a universal moral constant. Right now, you believe in that and they do not. I cannot judge what you actually did to them, since I have only your word for what it was, but from what I see of your and their behavior, I must take your side in this conflict."

"Well. That certainly gives me a warm fuzzy feeling, Picard, I'm thrilled that you'd stand up for me. Really." The sardonic tone made it impossible to tell if Q was being wholly flippant or if he was using the sarcasm to cover for genuine feelings. Earlier today Picard would have assumed the former, but knowing what he knew now about Q's defensive behaviors, he was inclined to think the latter. "But it's not relevant. Because you can't save me. Unless you're willing to turn on the Calamarain while they're off-guard and ruthlessly annihilate them, and I know you won't do that. Not for me. And even if you did, you'd despise me for the rest of your life for making you do it. The dying option is more attractive, actually."

"There you go again. You assume you know all the parameters of the situation and that there is no way we could possibly think of a solution when you can't. You know you're no longer omniscient, you know we understand our technology and capabilities far better than you do. Why do you assume we cannot possibly think of an answer simply because you can't?"

"Because I know the Calamarain. They're smart, Picard. There are thousands of separate minds in that cloud, and they can yoke together and think in unison, processing problems and solutions faster than even Data can. You can't outthink them - well, not unless you play on their particular cultural quirks like I did, but even that, I've taken that one as far as it goes. If you attack them and you don't kill them in the first round, they will destroy you. They're as adaptable as the Borg and they think your lives are totally unimportant. They can move faster than your highest warp, they can disperse around your weapons blasts, and we've seen they can rip your shields apart. Sooner or later they'd think of popping the magnetic shield that holds your anti-matter in, and kaboom. I've thought about this, believe me. And now that I've made a bargain, the Calamarain will hold me to it, and they'll destroy you for protecting me if I don't go. The only way I might live is if you kill all the Calamarain before they realize you're attacking - they think so little of your form of life, it won't occur to them that you might be dangerous until it's too late - and first of all, I know you're not going to do that, and secondly, the math doesn't work. There's one of me and several thousand Calamarain."

Picard frowned. "Your sudden interest in mathematics as a way of determining who should live and die doesn't fit well with a being who once declared that our species was 'always suffering and dying.' Or who allowed 18 people to be murdered to prove a point."

"You don't get it." Q got off the desk and went to look at the fish tank. "As a Q, I was immortal, omnipotent. My potential impact on the universe was vastly greater than any human's. Of course I didn't think your lives were particularly important. I was on a different scale; my existence was far, far more important than yours, just as yours is more important than the existence of any number of microbes, or an entire species of poisonous insects, or a herd of marauding animals. I was exactly as concerned for your well-being in comparison to my own as you are for this fish - I mean, if the ship was crashing would you evacuate the fish? If you had to self-destruct the ship and everyone was off except for the fish, would you hesitate? If you found out that Riker was allergic to the fish and it was making his hideous beard fall out, would you hesitate to get rid of it?"

"The fish is not a sentient being, and I would not cruelly torment the fish for fun. Or attempt to swim with the fish and its school, and then call in a fishing boat to harpoon them out of anger that they rejected me."

"According to the Q, you may or may not be what we consider a sentient being. The jury was still out on that one when they kicked me out. Your other point..." He smiled that weak, embarrassed smile Picard had seen twice already today. "Okay. You have me there. But that's not the point. The point I'm trying to make is... I'm human now. My life is worth exactly what any other one human life is worth... no more, no less. The only reason I want to think differently is, well, it's my life. And, you know, objectively, that doesn't mean very much." He turned back toward Picard, walked over to the chair and sat down. "Every sentient being on your level - my level now, too, I suppose - is just as valuable. So millions of sentient anthropoids on Bre'el IV are worth more than one sentient anthropoid, even if that one used to be a Q. A thousand sentient anthropoids - plus one android - are still worth more than me. If I am to avoid hypocrisy, I suppose I have to admit that several thousand Calamarain are worth more than me, as horrifically wrong as that seems. One of me doesn't balance against any of those. So if one of the parties involved has to die... it only makes sense that it would be me."

Picard blinked. Somehow Q had started from a completely immoral premise - that a being of great power was worth more than another sentient being with less puissance - and come around to a conclusion that was entirely consistent with Picard's understanding of ethics. The needs of the many did outweigh the needs of the one, and if Q was right that there were no other choices whatsoever, then he was right that his death would cause the least harm of any of the other options. But the thought of allowing a person on his ship, a civilian at that, to give himself up to be killed... it was sickening, and he would not accept that there was no other choice. Not yet.

"I can't argue with your conclusions, Q. But I do take exception to your premise. You remain convinced that the only solutions are to kill the Calamarain or die yourself. There may be other options. We haven't explored all the possibilities yet - and your insistence that you know all the options is only hurting you. I know it must hurt your pride to think that we could imagine something you can't, but is that pride worth dying for?"

Q looked at Picard for several long moments. Finally he said, "Did you ever read any 20th century science fiction?"

"I can't say I have read any great amount, no. I've read one or two of Asimov's short stories, since Data's creator seems to have been inspired by Asimov's robots, but overall their misconceptions about what the future would hold are... honestly, rather depressing. I prefer mysteries from the time period; at least they aren't anachronistic."

"Well, you've missed a few good reads. 20th century science fiction wasn't about the future, it was about their worldview, and you could honestly do with a better understanding of historical human worldviews. There's a particular story I'm thinking of that you really should have read."

"Does this non sequitur have a point, Q?"

"The story was called 'The Cold Equations', and it imagined that when you people developed space travel, the fuel you'd use would be so horrifically expensive and resource-intensive to produce, that spaceflight had to be calculated down to the last gram. During deceleration, the inertial drag of coming out of faster-than-light and slowing down to land would multiply any extra kilogram by so much drag, it could burn through the ship's fuel and cause it to crash."

"That isn't realistic. You would have to build a ship with redundant tolerances to compensate for fluctuations. And what if a last minute course change was required? If the ship was so short on fuel, it would have no way to evade an ion storm."

"They didn't know about ion storms. I don't think they'd even put up a satellite yet at the time this story was written. Certainly they hadn't gone to the moon. The point is, because fuel was very expensive, only the exact amount a ship would require would be supplied. So a stowaway was a deadly danger, and pilots would kill a stowaway without hesitation, given that most of them would be hijackers planning to murder the pilot and toss him out the airlock."

"How could the ship take off with a stowaway aboard, if fuel was so short? Wouldn't acceleration automatically use up too much fuel and make it obvious that the full trip would be impossible?"

"I forget. Maybe they left from a space station or something. I don't have an eidetic memory anymore, Picard. That's not the point anyway. In the story, the main character, a pilot, discovers he has a stowaway. And since he's transporting medicine to a colony world suffering from a plague, if his ship crashes it's not just him who'll die. So he has to space the stowaway. The only problem is, it turns out to be a teenage girl who thought it would be a great adventure to stow away aboard the ship, because her brother lived on the colony world and she figured she'd hitch a ride and no harm would be done."

"And does the pilot kill her?"

"Well, he tries to find another solution. He doesn't want to kill an innocent, naïve girl any more than you would. But the thing is, there is no other solution. The cold equations that rule physics don't care that the girl is innocent, that she meant no harm, that she wasn't aware of the problem with the fuel. They say that if her mass is aboard the spaceship when it decelerates, there won't be enough fuel to land. The ship will crash, she'll die, the pilot will die, her brother and everyone on the colony world waiting for the medicine will die. There's no way out. No one will magically swoop to the rescue, no engineer will rejigger the photonic flux matrix or whatever to provide more power, there isn't even a spacesuit aboard the ship that would fit the girl. She has to leave the ship, and the only place there is to go is naked space. She has to die. And at the end of the story, she accepts it, and she agrees to let the pilot space her, because it's the only way. Because it doesn't matter whether or not she deserves to die. She has to, for everyone else in the story to live."

"And you see yourself as that character? The young girl?"

"Well, obviously I am no innocent, Picard... but yes, I was naïve. I chose to become human for a number of reasons and none of them have panned out, but most of all, you can't protect me. It will destroy you to try. I was thinking I'd need protection, but not from something as powerful as the Calamarain - most species that don't like me very much are on your level. I had no contingency plan for what if one of my more powerful objets d'amusement showed up gunning for revenge. And because of that..." He swallowed. "Because of that I'm dead. Because the universe doesn't care if you're naïve, if you're panicked and desperate and not thinking very clearly, if you don't deserve to die this way. All it cares about are the cold equations, and without the powers of the Q, I'm as subject to them as you are. The Calamarain are going to kill me, because if they don't, then they'll kill me and this ship and probably end up getting the planet destroyed by the moon, or else you'll kill them, and you'd probably take casualties doing that, and whatever way it goes a lot more people would end up dead than if it's just me."

He looked away. "I... actually... it means something to me that you wanted to save me, Jean-Luc. More than you probably realize. But you can't. I wish you could, but my wishes don't shape reality any more. I want... I want to live. I mean, not that this being human thing is all that entertaining, you understand, but I... I never thought I'd die. I never had to accept my mortality because I wasn't mortal. And now I am, and now I have to die, and I... I don't want this, but it has to be this way. It doesn't matter what I want, what you want, what your fish wants. Unless one of my folks back home decides to swoop in and save us all, and frankly, I estimate the odds of that happening to be about, oh, zero. If anyone cared that much, they'd have spoken up at my trial and maybe I wouldn't be here."

"Let me ask you something, Q. You speak of the cold equations, but you were born with the ability to manipulate reality to your will. Have you ever before had to fight them? Have you ever before had to try to beat nigh-impossible odds? Because we have, my crew and I. I understand that you feel certain that there is no alternative but your death, and I can accept your reasoning. But you do not know everything any longer, you certainly don't know our capabilities as well as we do, and I don't think you have much experience in fighting for what you want."

Q shook his head slowly. "Not... like this, no. I've argued with the Continuum, but..." He trailed off, staring into nothing. Before Picard could begin to speak again, though, he said, "It's not as if I want to die. If there was a way you could save me, and it didn't involve killing anyone else, of course I'd want you to do it. I just don't think there is such a thing, and I don't think it does me any good to spend my last days living in false hope. I'd rather - I'd rather just try to accept it, because... it's not something I ever thought I'd have to accept, and... it's hard. I'm still having a hard time believing I'm really stuck as a human, let alone that I'm going to die."

"I understand. It is painful, to live in hope. But whether you believe we can succeed or not, I would ask you to cooperate with us. Tell us everything you know of the Calamarain, of their weaknesses, their abilities, the way they think. I cannot promise that we can save your life... and you are right, I fear, that if we can't find a way out of this situation your death is unfortunately the lesser of several possible evils." He stood up and put a hand on Q's shoulder. "I am impressed that you would volunteer to sacrifice yourself to save us, you know. Even the first time, when I was sure you hadn't thought things through, I was angry with you for going off on your own, but it did impress me. And I truly am sorry for misjudging you - I can see you've given this matter a great deal of thought, this time."

Q smiled sardonically. "Of course, Jean-Luc, I live to impress you."

Picard ignored that. "If we cannot find a way to save you... I will respect your agreement with the Calamarain, and we will allow you to surrender yourself. But I want you to promise me that you'll cooperate with us in trying to find an alternative." He dropped his hand, and matched Q's sardonic smile. "If nothing else, it would be a terrible waste to let you die the moment you show any sign of learning to be a decent sentient being."

"Ah, the stalwart Captain Picard. Boldly going where no one has gone before, seeking out new life in order to teach it to conform to human morality. Did you ever consider writing improving texts for children?"

"Whether it's human morality or Q morality, the fact is you are thinking about the impact your actions have on others, and trying to avoid causing unnecessary suffering or death. That's a far cry from how you behaved the last few times you were here. Who knows, if you live long enough as a human you might even become a person worth knowing."

"You only consider people you like worth knowing? That's short-sighted of you, Jean-Luc. Anyone you can learn from is worth knowing, and you can't pretend you've never learned anything from knowing me."

"No, I suppose I can't." He sat back down. "You should take a nap, Q. You look as if you haven't slept since you napped in the brig yesterday."

Q shrugged. "Yeah, I couldn't figure out how anyone sleeps in that torture chamber you call a sickbay."

"Well, you've been assigned a private room now."

"What's the old expression? 'I'll sleep when I'm dead?' I've got three days, I don't plan to spend any part of them unconscious."

"Q, after three days without sleep you'd probably wish to be dead. Humans need sleep. Your ability to fully use your intellect and control your own emotions is dependent on sleeping. I would imagine both are abilities you find useful."

Q sighed. "Moons are going to start crashing into Bre'el III within a day. I don't have time to sleep right now. Maybe once we figure out how to evacuate all those idiots. But I have to get back to work."

"All right. But get some sleep as soon as you can. Don't try to stay up for three days."

"Fine, fine."

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