textfiles/sf/STARTREK/dilemma

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From: Alara Rogers <ajer@delphi.com>
Newsgroups: alt.startrek.creative
Subject: Dilemma
Date: Sun, 24 Jul 94 03:48:26 -0500
Organization: Delphi (info@delphi.com email, 800-695-4005 voice)
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Message-ID: <5YyQrEK.ajer@delphi.com>
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This is a Q story in which no members of the Enterprise crew appear
and Q's own name is never mentioned (though the identity is obvious,
I think.) It's short (I promise.) Comments welcome!


Dilemma


     In those last fatal fleeting years, they called themselves
Ernest and Maida. Stupid names, and he'd told them so. He'd
warned them, time and time again; had done his best to dissuade
them, but they wouldn't listen. They had been seduced by aliens
and their primitive ways, high on love and the thrill of
rebellion. He knew all about the thrill of rebellion; he also
knew the wages of sin, and he'd warned them. But they hadn't
listened. No one ever listened to him.
     Ernest and Maida had been his friends. At least, he'd
considered them as such. And now they were dead.
     And now he was being asked to kill their daughter.
     "It can't be necessary to kill the girl," he argued. 
     "Don't be a fool," They told him. "She's manifested the
powers. Do you think we can simply let her run around loose?"
     "Who's saying to let her run loose? We can easily enough
neutralize any threat she prevents. Why don't You simply take the
powers away? You were eager enough to take mine. She wouldn't
even consider it a punishment."
     "And then what happens the next time someone decides to make
unauthorized offspring? Do we want infants of our kind springing
up everywhere, parents secure in the knowledge that if the
children don't work out, we'll simply let them live out their
lives in peace? We need to make an example."
     "Politics," he snarled under his breath, contemptuously. It
all came down to politics in the end, didn't it?
     He was not popular, neither among aliens nor his own kind.
That he was unloved among other races was to be expected, given
his work and his role. The reasons for his lack of friends among
his own kind were more complex. It might have something to do
with what had happened to his best friend, three hundred years
ago. The two had had a devastating falling-out, leaving him
scarred and her... well, no one really wanted to think about what
had happened to her. And so perhaps no one wanted to risk coming
close to him, and perhaps he didn't want to risk coming close to
them. Or perhaps it was his role. He himself was of that opinion.
He was a devil's advocate, a passionate opponent of whatever
anyone else believed in, and his integrity in his duties had
always been impeccable. A person whose profession, vocation,
avocation is that of the loyal opposition is difficult to love. 
     There was also his contempt for politics, and his outspoken
challenges to authority, in a society where hierarchy controlled
everything. He made few alliances, and fewer friends, that way.
After his closest friend had tried to kill him, and after what
he'd done to her in response, he contented himself with his work
and the amusements it could give him. 
     Some said his amusements had become excessive, had changed
from the ruthless compassion demanded by his work to the sadism
of a torturer. Some said he was too outspoken, too rebellious,
too willing to challenge authority. Some said he was far too
arrogant for one so young-- his people were supposed to be
arrogant, but there were limits. Others simply didn't like him.
He made little attempt to be liked, after all. It was politics
that had brought him down, had sent him spiraling down in the
esteem of his society. He had been hurt, humiliated, exiled--
almost killed-- by what amounted to politics. In a very short
time, he had learned a depth of bitterness he hadn't known he
could know. He had learned fear.
     "Simply because you are too immature to comprehend the
necessity of the political--"
     "Oh, I comprehend it, all right. I just despise it. And why
me? Ernest and Maida were my friends."
     "Inasmuch as you have friends."
     He smiled sardonically, far too thick-skinned to let the
accusation hurt, even though it was true. "Inasmuch," he
acknowledged.
     "You have knowledge of the species she's been raised among."
     That was true enough, ironic as it was. Ernest and Maida had
been seduced by an alien race, enticed into a life they were not
compatible with. Dreaming of a freedom possible only to
primitives, they had disobeyed, and thrown their lives away. Even
he had been forced to cast his vote for their termination. They
knew the laws, the reasoning behind their sentence. They had
disobeyed direct orders, and so had to die. 
     He had been bitterly enraged with the alien race that lured
them to their death, then. He had seen them through mud-colored
glasses, seeing only the evil and harshness in their history. He
had plotted humiliations for the species, had devised tests too
cruel for any sentient species to pass, and judgments too harsh
for any species to bear.
     But his anger had cooled in the fifteen years it had taken
him to find time for it. And he had, despite himself, found the
race fascinating. A curious mixture of arrogance and humility,
they declared that they were one of the species with greatest
potential and then excused one another by saying they were only
human. They manifested advanced virtues far before it was safe
for them. Like snowflakes, they were beautiful and unutterably
fragile, and he could no longer find it in his heart to condemn
them for Ernest and Maida's fate. There was some other power to
blame there. And slowly, surely, he was forced into a recognition
of what that power was. 
     When politics had dragged him down and his own people had
betrayed him to die, those had sheltered him, despite their
uncomprehending anger at his tests, despite the fact that doing
so threatened one of their incredibly self-important little
missions of mercy and through it, their lives. He had been
overwhelmed, knowing he would never have the strength to show the
kind of compassion they did as long as he was as powerless as
them. He tried to tell himself it was because he could not be as
innocent, as naive, as they were... but they knew compassion was
dangerous. They understood danger better than he did, who had so
rarely truly faced it. The fact was that by their standards he
was a coward.
     It was bad enough to be sentenced to die, bad enough to be
stripped of the ability to do the work that gave his life
meaning-- to say nothing of the sheer physical trauma he was now
subject to. But to know that he was a coward, and that his
cowardice might destroy these fragile people, was too much. He
had offered up his life for theirs-- which, though he couldn't
have known it at the time, was the best thing he could have done.
There were those agitating for him to be forgiven. He had allies
of principle. It was simply friends he didn't have.
     So now he was back, and faced with a cruel dilemma. He was
not fully reinstated; there were things he was required to do to
"prove" his worthiness, and this was one of them. Kill Ernest and
Maida's child, herself a bridge between that fragile species and
his own-- an entirely preventable death caused by politics. Or
refuse, and give his enemies an excuse to have him destroyed.
     "How stupid do You think I am?" he asked. "You can't hide
Your true reasons from me."
     "You're free to draw whatever conclusions you like, as long
as you carry through your orders."
     He shook his head. "No."
     "Are you refusing Us?"
     "Merely pointing out that You're being idiots. If the child
deserved death-- if it was at all advantageous to kill her-- we
should have eliminated her with her parents. No. If she's one of
us, then she deserves the same chance we give our own children.
After all, if she joins us of her own free will, she can hardly
be a danger, can she? And if it's not offered, people are going
to know the death was political. Even Your positions aren't
unassailable.  It has to be framed in a context. She has to be
given a test."
     "Of course you'd say that."
     "Of course I would. That doesn't make it any less true. If
You wanted someone who would do Your dirty work and never
question, why did You create me as I am?"
     They considered. He thought his chances were reasonably
good. His argument was cogent, and if They'd selected him for
this They had to have considered that he'd try to talk Them out
of it. So They were likely to be open to the possibility.
     "Very well," They said. "Persuade her to come of her own
free will, and she will be inducted into the Continuum as any of
our children. But it must be her choice, entirely. No coercion of
any sort."
     He grinned. This was better than he'd expected. "That's
fair."
     "Keep in mind that you failed at this once."
     They had to remind him of that. He scowled. "Don't interfere
with me this time, and I won't fail. She'll come back with me. I
guarantee it."
     "And if she does not..."
     His eyes narrowed. "If she doesn't, I'll worry about it when
the time comes."
     "If she doesn't, you'll kill her."
     "Yes, yes! Very well! You want me to say it? If she refuses
to come to the Continuum, I'll kill her. Happy now?"
     "Yes," They said, and left him.
     As They left, he understood quite how precarious his
situation was, then. If the girl refused, he would have to kill
her, or else risk being destroyed for disobedience himself. And
yet, if he let the threat of dissolution keep him from defying an
authority he knew to be in the wrong, his position as the
incorruptible, unsilenceable loyal opposition would be forever
compromised. And he would be painted as a murderer of children,
and fewer voices would be raised in his defense when he
inevitably came to conflict with politics again. Either way, if
the girl refused, it would eventually, inevitably, lead to his
destruction.
     So. He would just have to make sure she didn't refuse,
wouldn't he?
     With the speed of thought, he located the girl and departed.
She was now with the humans he knew best. In a sense, that made
things more difficult-- they might take it into their heads to
argue against him, out of mistrust. That was almost amusing--
that they would end up playing his role, the devil's advocate,
against him.
     But he couldn't let that stop him. He had to persuade the
girl to come with him. Whatever it took.