Encounter at Farpoint (3 page)

The column of light shook and then resolved itself into the semblance of a human figure directly in front of Picard’s command chair. There was a brief moment when the outline shimmered uncertainly—and then it stabilized into a figure.

A human figure.

Picard blinked, scarcely able to believe that what he saw before him was what appeared to be a man dressed in Elizabethan costume and ceremonial body armor. The clothing details, all in black and white and silver, were perfect—embroidery-edged neck and sleeve ruffs, tight-sleeved doublet laced up the front, paned trunk hose, patterned canions, and the netherstocks covered by knee-high cuffed boots. A short cape was slung over his left shoulder; a ceremonial sword hung at his side. The being had short hair, a pointed beard, and a moustache. The helmet was cradled in his left arm.

As soon as he realized he had coalesced into an identifiable form, the
being
offered an elaborate court bow toward Picard. The forward turbolift doors snapped open, and the security team that Tasha had signaled began to lunge forward onto the bridge. The alien merely nodded toward them, and a miniature version of the grid spanned the turbolift door and thrust the security team back. The lift doors snapped shut on their surprised faces.

The Elizabethan turned mockingly toward Picard and extended another bow in his direction. The voice of the creature, however, was anything but courteous. “Thou art notified that thy kind hath infiltrated the galaxy too far already. Thou art directed to return to thine own solar system immediately.”

Picard tilted his head almost quizzically. He considered his words carefully, decided to stall for time while be figured out who or what he was dealing with. “That’s quite a directive,” he said calmly. “Who are you and what gives you the right to issue such an order?”

“In words thou may understand, we call ourselves
the Q
. Or thou mayest call me that. It’s all much the same thing.” He fluttered his hand to indicate his elaborate costume. “I present myself to thee as a fellow ship captain that thou wilt better understand me.” His voice flattened harshly. “Go back whence thou camest.”

“You haven’t answered my other question. What gives you the right to order that?”

Q
appeared mildly annoyed. “We are greater than thee. We have achieved our superiority over millenia.
Thou
art still mud crawlers compared to us. And thou contaminatest the galaxy wherever thou goest.”

Tasha Yar flicked a glance at Lieutenant Torres, who had eased around in his chair. His hand crept toward the small hand phaser on his belt. Before she could snap an order to stop him, he had drawn the phaser and started to aim it at
Q
. The alien barely bothered to look; he simply nodded at Torres. A fluttering electric blue wave enveloped the young man, cutting off the sharp scream he had started to utter. He crashed to the deck with the sound of a hard, almost brittle object as Picard leapt to his feet.

“Stand where thou art!”
Q
shouted.

Picard ignored him, fighting to control his anger as he knelt beside Torres. The man looked as if he had been
instantly
frozen. Troi moved forward to kneel opposite Picard, checking Torres for pulse and heartbeat. A white mist of evaporation rose gently from Torres’ body. Troi was alarmed to feel the intense cold of his almost marble-like flesh.

“Data, call the medics!” Picard snapped.

The android reached for the left hand arm panel on the captain’s chair and tabbed a control, speaking urgently to sickbay. Troi finished her brief check of Torres’ body. “I don’t believe it. He’s frozen. Life signs are there, but slow.”

Picard snatched up the phaser, prudently reversed it, and stood up to shake it under
Q
’s nose. “He would not have injured you!” He displayed the phaser. “Do you understand this—the stun setting?”

“Stun?” The alien’s left eyebrow arched sardonically. “
Stunning
some life forms, Captain, can kill them. Did thine officer run a systems check on
my
form before he attempted to use that weapon? Besides, even if it would only ‘stun’ me, knowing humans as thou dost, wouldst
thou
be captured helpless by them? I was merely protecting myself. Now,
go back or thou shalt most certainly die!
”

“This ship isn’t going anywhere until this man is taken care of.”

Q
studied the firm set of Picard’s face, the tenseness of his stance, and snorted in amusement. “Typical, of course.” He negligently flicked a damask handkerchief from a pocket in his trunk hose. “As thou wishest.”

The medical team arrived at that moment in the turbolift. The barrier grid that had obstructed the security men did not appear. Dr. Asenzi, the assistant chief medical officer, shot a look at
Q
, then at Picard. The captain gestured him to Torres and he moved quickly down to the man. The medics followed, trailing emergency aids and a floating stretcher. Asenzi scanned Torres quickly and efficiently, his low voice smoothly reading out the results. Finally, he nodded to his medical team and they lifted Torres’ body onto the floating stretcher and started moving him toward the forward turbolift.

“Is he still alive?” Picard asked.

“He’s in cryo-sleep. We can handle it,” Asenzi said; but there was something in his eyes and his tone of voice that said, “But maybe we can’t.” Asenzi followed the medical team into the turbolift. The doors sighed shut behind them.

Picard turned toward
Q
, who had ignored the entire interlude and turned his attention to the inspection of his elaborate costume. “This is how you demonstrate your moral superiority?”

“On the contrary. This is how I demonstrate my physical superiority.”
Q
frowned abruptly, looking around the bridge as if seeing it for the first time. “I see that this costume is out of date. Thy little centuries go by so rapidly, Captain. Perhaps thou’lt better understand this.”
Q
moved his hand slightly.

Again the rumble of thunder shook the bridge. The searing flash of light filled the bridge again—bright enough to be blinding even through closed eyelids. Picard could see the bones of his own hand silhouetted in the glare. When his vision returned, he could see that
Q
had changed. The beard and moustache had vanished. The Elizabethan garb had become the green officer’s uniform of the 1980’s U.S. Marine Corps. Three rows of medals were precisely lined up on his left breast, and the fore and aft cap sported the silver bars of a captain.

“Actually,”
Q
said briskly, “the issue at stake is patriotism. You must get back to your world and put an end to the communist aggression. All it takes is a few good men.”

“
What?
What are you talking about?”

“The evil empire, Captain—the struggle for freedom. The need to make the world safe for democracy.”

Picard shook his head, as if to clear it. What was
Q
talking about? “You’re still in the wrong time! That nonsense is centuries behind us!”

“But you can’t deny, Captain, that you’re still a dangerous, savage child-race.”

“Certainly I can deny it,” Picard shot back. “I agree we still were when humans wore uniforms like that
four
hundred years ago. . . .”

The Marine
Q
pushed closer to Picard, interrupting harshly. “At which time you slaughtered millions in silly arguments about how to divide the resources of your insignificant little world. And four hundred years before that, you were murdering each other in quarrels over tribal god-images. And since there have been no indications that humans will ever change—”

“But even as far back as the time of that uniform, we had begun to make progress. We had begun the work of ending hunger and disease, poverty and illiteracy. We stamped out plagues, we ended famines. We taught nations how to rebuild themselves from the devastations of war. We were children growing up. We may not have known how to do the best job, but we did the job and we learned from our mistakes.
We made progress
. Rapid progress. We are still making progress.”

Q
twisted his mouth sardonically. “Oh? Shall we review your so-called rapid progress?” He moved his hand again in that same little gesture. Picard didn’t flinch when the thunder and lightning came again. Picard recognized it as a trick—a bit of stage magic to startle the audience, to frighten him and throw him off balance. Well, it wasn’t going to work.

This time, the Marine gear changed to the stark officer’s uniform of the mid-21st Century wars. Now
Q
was a Fourth World Mercenary. Harsh and ugly. Every historian’s nightmare: the soldiers who could not feel, could not be afraid, and could not be stopped. The healthy, clean-shaven look was replaced by an ugly, unshaven automaton face. You pointed him at a target and gave him the order to capture it or kill it. He would not return until he did.

Q
spoke and his voice sounded slow, slightly drugged, as he made his point. “Rapid progress, Captain, to where humans learned to control their military with drugs.”

“And your species never made a mistake—? Never learned better—?”

A beep sounded from Worf’s Ops console, and he reached out to tab a control. “Ops,” he murmured. The low-voiced report brought a quick smile to his dark face. He turned toward Picard and nodded. “Sir, Dr. Asenzi reports Lieutenant Torres is going to be all right.”

Q
watched as a sigh of relief rippled through the bridge complement. “Concern for one’s comrade. How touching.”

Worf tensed as his eyes shifted from the contemptuous intruder to Picard. “A personal request, sir. Permission to clean up the bridge?” he meant
Q
.

As satisfying as it would have been to say yes, Picard shook his head. Worf started to protest, but Picard stared him down. They’d had one casualty already. Picard didn’t want any more. He wouldn’t risk any others until he knew what he was dealing with. Behind him, Tasha had come down the ramp from the horseshoe toward the command area.

“Lieutenant Worf is right, sir. As security chief, I can’t just stand here—”

“Yes, you can, Lieutenant,” Picard snapped.

Tasha wanted to protest. He could see it in her eyes. If he were still a security chief, he would want to protest as vigorously as she did. All her instincts were to fight back, to deal with this intrusion on a physical level, even if it was clear the alien was far more than he appeared to be. But he was captain now, and that was a different set of responsibilities.

Tasha lowered her eyes. “Yes, sir.” The captain was right, of course. Wait and see. But Tasha didn’t have to pretend she liked it.

The 21st-Century soldier form of
Q
pulled out a slender tube attached to his uniform and turned it so he could sniff something from it. Then, taking a deep breath, he murmured, “Ah, yes . . . better.” The drug seemed to take hold almost immediately, and
Q
smiled sarcastically at Picard. “Later, of course, on finally reaching deep space, humans found enemies to fight there, too. And to broaden those struggles,”
Q
swept a hand around to indicate Worf and Troi, “you again found allies for still more murdering. The same old story all over again.”

Despite himself, despite his training, Picard found his anger rising. Who was this pompous posing popinjay? By what right did he intrude and accuse? If his manners were any indication,
Q
had no claim to moral superiority at all. Picard stepped toward the being, allowing some of his anger to show. “
No
. No. You don’t know what you’re talking about. You have no sense of who we are at all. The most dangerous ‘same old story’ is the one in front of me right now.
Self-righteous
life forms who are eager
not
to learn but to prosecute, to judge anything they don’t understand or can’t tolerate.”

Q
cocked his head to one side, eyeing Picard sharply. He laughed. “What an interesting idea.
Prosecute
and
judge?
” He took a step or two away from Picard, pondering the idea, then he turned back. “And suppose it turns out we understand you humans only too well?”

“We’ve no fear of what the facts about us would reveal.”

“The facts about you? Oh, splendid, splendid! You are a veritable fountain of excellent ideas.” He flashed a pleasant smile at Picard. “Well, now—we can proceed. Of course, there are preparations to make, Captain, but I promise you, when we next meet, we will proceed exactly as you suggest.” He made the short, curt salute of the 21st-Century troops. The thunder roll and flare of blinding light carried him away.

T
HE INCREDIBLE LIGHT
faded quickly, but it was several moments more before the bridge crew fully accepted that the alien being was actually gone. They looked around with both confusion and relief.

Picard’s stomach was churning. Too soon. This was happening too soon. He didn’t have a first officer. He hadn’t had a chance to drill his crew and get to know them. It wasn’t fair. Deep space wasn’t fair.

Picard touched his neck to check his pulse. It was racing. Fear? Excitement? It didn’t matter. He knew what was needed now—
before anything else
—was the appearance of self-control.
Fake it till you make it
, Picard said to himself. The crew looks to the captain as the source of all well-being on the ship. So be it.

Picard glanced around the bridge calmly, “Everybody all right?” There were uneasy nods of assent. “Good.” He eased himself into his command chair and looked at Data. “Any readings on the alien?”

Data shook his head. “Bridge sensors picked up nothing. Either he wasn’t here or he blanked them out. As we all seem to agree on what we saw, I would assume that the alien blanked them out. Let me also suggest a third possibility: the being might not have been physically present at all. He might have been a projection or an illusion of some kind. But again, that would require some kind of blanking effect on the bridge sensors. A fourth possibility: the being may have been a telepathic projection and therefore not detectable by the bridge sensors. A fifth possibility—”