Q. Q is never good news. She stands there in the hot sultry Earth dusk, beaming at us.
It's the... apparently... female Q, the one I've met before, the one who spoke to Ronnie at Tiaza Zephora. She looks like a female human, blonde and bubbly. Right now, she is wearing a short dress, splashed with many bright colours, and there are paper streamers in her hair, and a near-empty cocktail glass in her hand.
"Right, now," she says. "Firs' thing is, this lecture of yours? Y'need t'be very careful... very, very careful... very, very, very, very -" She hiccups. "Sorry. Nausicaans. Nausicaans disguised as cadets. Y'need to, y'know, watch out for 'em. Very, very careful."
Ronnie and I exchange glances, while T'Pia just stares. "That was hours ago," says Ronnie.
"Rubbish!" cries Q. "You mortals've got no idea 'bout time... I mean, OK, I'm a bit later than I was gonna be. Was at a party." She waves the glass at us. "Di'n't wanna be rude an' leave early, did I? Jus' stayed on for 'nother Mojave or so." She peers into the glass. "Not Mojave. Movember? Mojito, thass th'one. Jus' another mojito. Or two. Or three." She looks up at the dim evening sky. "Wow, it gets dark early, this time o'year."
"If you have anything useful to say," says Ronnie, "say it. Otherwise, just get out of our hair."
"Temper!" says Q. "You're not th'one to talk, Miss Stygmalian Rift. 'S still going on, y'know. Still all about you."
"You said that before," says Ronnie. "And you were wrong, weren't you? It all came down to Tylha and her cat buddy. Not me. And besides, the Stygmalian Rift is closed. Gone."
There is another flash. Q is still there, but her clothes have changed; she is wearing a loose vest with floral patterns, a number of bead necklaces, denim trousers which flare out enormously to hide her feet, and spectacles with heart-shaped pink lenses. Her hair, too, has changed, to a lank waist-length fall. The cocktail glass is gone. She wags a finger at Ronnie.
"The thing you squares gotta get your heads round," she says, "is that the Rift is, like, an extra-temporal phenomenon, so, being, like, outside time, it is always there, and always gone, at the same, like, time, being eternal and acausal. Like, cosmic, man. Far out. Whoa." She tosses back her head, apparently to look up at the stars, and falls backwards onto the grass.
"I am trying very hard to bear in mind," says T'Pia, "that this is a super-being of almost limitless abilities."
"Better believe it, baby," says Q from the ground. "I'm amazing."
I walk over to her, and look down. "You have some reason for being here," I say. "You don't do things without a reason."
"Everyone's gotta be somewhere, babe." Q smiles beatifically up at me. "'Cept you, maybe. Maybe you need to be somewhere where you can be and not be at the same time."
"What the hell's wrong with her?" Ronnie asks. "She's making less sense than I do, and I don't need the competition."
Something clicks in the back of my mind. "Wait. That might actually make sense."
"It might?" Ronnie sounds incredulous. "How? Without smoking whatever she's been smoking."
"T'Pia, do you remember the business at Delta Gracilis?" I ask.
"Naturally," says T'Pia. "I concur. That might well be the situation to which Q refers."
"Delta where?" Ronnie demands.
"Research facility. A scientist there built a device that superimposed multiple quantum states. Jumbled realities."
"Sounds alarming," says Ronnie. "How did it work?"
"Badly. There were casualties - lots of them."
"To the best of my recollection," T'Pia says, "the facility was shut down after its evacuation. It was impossible to tell how much of its structural integrity was compromised."
Q says nothing. She just lies there, her eyes closed, smiling broadly. I resist the impulse to kick her. "Is that it?" I demand. "Delta Gracilis? Is that where we need to be?"
"We all got needs, baby," murmurs Q, without opening her eyes. Then there is a flash, and she is gone.
---
The small conference room on Earth Spacedock is crowded with top brass. There are the three of us, of course... and then, there are our bosses.
Admiral Semok, my superior, reads the report with a dubious look on his normally placid face. Admiral Gref of Sixth Fleet, nominally Ronnie's CO, glowers in a traditionally Tellarite way. T'Pia's boss is Admiral Stroffa of Stellar Survey, a matronly Denobulan woman with kindly eyes.
All six of us look worried.
"This is nonsense," Gref mutters. "And probably dangerous nonsense, too."
"I must respectfully disagree," says Semok. Gref snorts and rolls his eyes. My Vulcan boss never could handle Tellarites properly. "The Q entity invariably has some purpose to her - or his - actions. It is rarely apparent, though, what that purpose is, except in hindsight."
"Too right," mutters Ronnie.
"Q seems interested in you," Stroffa says to Ronnie, "but... she has directly intervened in Vice Admiral Shohl's life before. To your benefit." She's looking at me, now. "Is it possible, do you think, that Q has some... affection for you?"
I shake my head, decisively. "I don't think Q has any affection for anybody," I say. "Not on our level of being, anyway. No, if Q saved my life, it was for some reason of her own."
"Nausicaans," Gref grumbles. "We can send a firm protest to J'mpok about the Nausicaans, anyway. For whatever good it might do."
"That is not our primary concern, though," says Semok.
"Might be Shohl's," says Gref.
"No," I say. "I can handle the Nausicaans. But whatever Q is talking about - that has to be our main worry."
"I have conjectured," says T'Pia, "that the Q entity's behaviour might have been artificially impaired, in some way."
"Someone got Q drunk?" Ronnie raises a sceptical eyebrow.
"Or affected Q in an analogous manner." T'Pia is unruffled.
"An interesting possibility," says Stroffa. Gref stands up and stumps around, irritably.
"I don't like any of this," I say, "but can we afford not to pass up a hint from Q? However... oddly delivered?"
Gref stands facing the wall for a moment, then turns around suddenly. "No," he says, "I don't suppose we can. Pity. I could use Grau for our next set of tactical exercises." He glares at Ronnie. "And a touch of military discipline would do you good." Ronnie - thankfully - doesn't reply.
"What resources will you require?" Semok asks.
"Q mentioned the three of us," I say. "So... ourselves, and our ships. I suppose it makes a kind of sense. T'Pia and I are familiar with Delta Gracilis, and we have Q's word that Ronnie - uh, Vice Admiral Grau - is involved, somehow."
"Oh, call her Ronnie," says Gref, "everyone does." He sighs noisily. "The Undine, the Iconians, now Q. Life was simpler when we were just shooting Klingons."
"Noisier, though," says Ronnie. "So, we gonna do this, or what?"
"Go to Delta Gracilis," I muse, "find out what's happened to it since it was shut down... take some scans, see if we can find points of similarity with the Stygmalian Rift... and then, go from there. Wherever it takes us."
"Sounds like a plan," says Ronnie. "Not much of a plan, but hey, better than nothing."
Gref sighs again, hard enough to ruffle his beard. "Go on, then," he says. "Consider yourself on detached duty. As usual."
"Normal conditions will apply," says Semok, "with regard to reporting whatever may occur, and how your vessel might be modified to cope with it." Which is, basically, the arrangement I have with the Experimental Engineering group - they design stuff, I push it to the point where it breaks.
Stroffa says, very simply, "Good luck, all of you."
I have a feeling we're going to need it.
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