textfiles/sf/STARTREK/quantumq

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From: bb106@FreeNet.Carleton.CA (JoAnne Soper-Cook)
Subject: Q Stories
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Sender: bb106@freenet.carleton.ca (JoAnne Soper-Cook)
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Date: Sat, 4 Feb 1995 14:30:08 GMT
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Quantum Q                                           May 28, 1994
     
     Emily Tarrant turned over in her bed and wished she could go
to sleep.  It had been a long day, she ought to be tired enough. 
Still, there was a nagging insomnia pulling at her, something
beckoning that there were other things to be doing, other
interests to pursue.  She just wanted to sleep.
     It had been bad enough being stuck all morning rerouting
circuit pathways on one of the shuttlecraft. She would have
though that might have filled the boredom quota for the day. 
Then, after lunch, Counselor Troi had cornered her in Ten-
Foreward and demanded that she come right then to the Psych lab
for her quarterly testing. Long overdue, Troi had said, pulling
her insistently along the corridor.  Better to get it done and
over with.  So she'd whiled the rest of the day away in the Psych
lab looking at holograms and indicating if she was (a) mildly
happy, (b) moderately happy, or (c) markedly happy.  It had been
a colossal waste of time.  And after spending a fretful evening
in her quarters trying to read a holo-book, placating herself
with warm milk and boozy jazz tunes, she had given up in disgust
and gone early to bed.  Most of her friends (the techie ones, she
thought sourly) had gone to an Engineering convention on Rigel,
and the bulk of her colleagues from Exobiology were at some
seminar somewhere.  There was nobody she could talk to, nobody to
go to the holodeck with...she'd run into Commander Data in one of
the corridors, but it was too awkward:  both of them,
unfortunately, remembered only too well their attempts at a
relationship, and how badly it had ended.  She had muttered a
quick greeting and bolted.
     So now she was utterly bored, and her bed seemed to be
getting harder and harder, her pillow turning into cement.   No
matter which way she turned, she became more and more
uncomfortable.  Finally, she sat up in frustration. "God damn
it!"
     "Tut, tut, my dear!"  A sensuous male voice slid out of the
wall and coiled around her.  "Blasphemy!  Just because you're a
little bored...."
     Tarrant watched as Q followed his voice into her quarters,
gazing in dismay as he seemed to coalesce out of the bulkhead,
forming his normal appearence in front of her. 
     "What's the matter?  No excitement in Chez Picard?"  Q
grinned at her, sitting on the end of her bed.
     "Q!"  Tarrant frowned. She wondered what he wanted, wondered
if she wanted him to stay or leave.  Q had visited her before,
this wasn't the first time.  And his visits were always
stimulating, in many ways.  The only trouble was, Tarrant wasn't
sure if it was good protocol to be running around the galaxy with
an omnipotent being who got a kick out of needling Starfleet. 
"What are you doing here?"  She watched as one of his hands rose
to shoulder height, a bright red apple appearing in his palm. 
The apple hadn't been there before.
     "I heard you complaining--decided to see what I could do." 
He bit into the apple with a loud crunch, chewed thoughtfully as
he gazed at her.  "How can I help?"  He leaned forward.  "Just
you come and sit on Uncle Q's lap...."
     Tarrant shivered.  She had definite visions of sitting on
Q's lap, and none of them were even remotely avuncular in nature. 
Oh, she'd like to sit on his lap, alright--
     She pushed it from her head. "I've had an awful day."
     He looked suitably sympathetic, or as sympathetic as he
could with a mouthful of Red Delicious. "Oh...so let's have some
fun!"  He got that tell-tale twinkle in his dark eyes, the one
that Tarrant knew so well, the one that took her to the Festival
of Masques on Saturn three, and Comet-Skating near the Devarae
Nebula, and that one time that she'd gotten drunk on Dronogan
neisroi at the New Moon Ball and had found herself kissing Q in a
corner of the crowded ballroom, while his warm, long-fingered
hands had held her close to him, and...
     Damn!  Tarrant shook her head to loosen the thought.  Where
the hell had that come from?  She cast a look at Q, who was still
innocently eating the apple he'd conjured out of nowhere. "Where
did you get that apple?"  she asked, to change the subject.
     "Canada--the Annapolis Valley, to be exact."  He took
another bite, examined it closely.  "Want some?"
     "No--how can you get apples from Canada, Q?"
     He finished the fruit, and the core disappeared into
nothingness.  "Can I stay here for awhile?"  He asked, apparently
apropros of nothing.  "Some of the other Q's are looking for me." 
His gaze was guileless, betraying nothing.
     Tarrant sighed, loudly. "What have you done now?"
     "Nothing."  he sounded disgruntled that she would even ask.
"I was just having some fun with the Mayor-Emeritus of Pamre
Five." Suddenly, Q's fingers were intensely interesting to him.
     "What did you do to him?"  Tarrant resisted the urge to
giggle--now that Q was here, her bad day had vanished like a
mist.
     "I just let the air out of his ritual phallic-enhancement
trousers."  Q's face was poised to laugh, Tarrant could see that.
     "Q!"  She composed herself. "You know how
important...er...size is to those people.  Especially for their
ruler--it's necessary for the people to think he has the biggest-
-you know--"
     "I know all about it." Q was trying to look chastened,
without much success.  "I just think it's a ridiculous custom--
and the pants were bright yellow--"
     "What color was the phallic enhancement unit?"  Tarrant
couldn't look him in the eye.
     Q's composure was beginning to show signs of wear.
"Green...a sort of really putrid--"  He caught Tarrant's gaze and
started to laugh, slowly at first, like a valve releasing
pressure, then building in intensity until he was lying across
Tarrant's bed, holding his sides.  "--a really horrible cucumber
green, with these little brass bells--at least, I think they were
brass, which would ring every time he moved...."  He laughed for
a few moments longer, pausing to wipe his eyes with the corner of
the bedsheets. "So, I need somewhere to hide--can I stay here for
a week?"
     "No."
     "A couple of days, then--just until the Mayor-Emeritus cools
off--"
     Tarrant shook her head. "No way."
     "A day--"
     "No!"
     He was getting desperate. "Just for tonight then--I promise,
I'll behave myself--"
     "Out of the question--Captain Picard doesn't want you
anywhere near this ship!"
     "Please--I'm begging you--just for tonight--"
     Tarrant sighed. "Alright, but--"
     "Gee, thanks!"  The air rippled for a moment, and Q's
uniform disappeared, was replaced with silk pajamas.  "What side
of the bed do you want?  I like to sleep near the wall, myself,
what with all that stellar drift near the windows--"
     "Shut up, Q."
     "Yes, Ma'am. Your wish is my command."  Q pulled the covers
over himself.
     "That's what I'm afraid of," Tarrant confessed, wearily. 
There was silence for a few moments.
     "Remember that time on Lrawner Two when I convinced that
Paklid senator that you were the long-lost Regent Of Vicaria?  We
had him conned into calling you 'Majesty' and everything--it was
priceless!"  Q sounded positively gleeful, Tarrant couldn't tell
for sure: it was completely dark.  "We had him eating out of our
hands--"
     Tarrant hit him with a pillow. 

     She was awakened some time later by her computer chime.  She
sat up in the eerie darkness, the total blackness of space, her
room formless around her. "Tarrant here."
     "Just wanted to inform you that we're on possible alert
status," Jackson, the officer on night-watch, sounded tired. "The
remote sensor array spotted three Romulan Warbirds uncloaking
near the edge of the neutral zone.  Captain wants a ship-wide
alert."
     Tarrant struggled to concentrate...she'd been dreaming about
something, floating somewhere...  "Alright--thanks Commander
Jackson."  Since she was one of the ship's tactical officers,
Jackson had been correct in notifying her. 
     "Romulans--interesting."  Q sat up beside her, an oblique
shape in the bed.  His voice sounded less alert than usual, and
Tarrant wondered if he'd been caught sleeping.  If he was in
human form, he could sleep, couldn't he?
     "Don't get any ideas," Tarrant warned. "The last thing I
need--"
     "Shh."  Q touched her lips gently. "I wouldn't dare--do you
think I want every Q in this sector trampling all over each
other?  If they find out where I am, I'm in big trouble."  He was
silent for a brief moment. "It seems I forgot to thank you for
taking me in."
     "Were you asleep just now?"  Tarrant was suddenly curious.
     "Not in the way you think about sleeping--I was simply
elsewhere."
     "But I woke up, you were here in the bed, right where you'd
been when I turned off the lights.  I don't remember you going
anywhere."
     He shook his head. "Precisely--my body was still here, or
this human configuration of it."
     "What do you really look like?" Tarrant asked him. "In your
natural state, I mean?"  Her eyes were getting used to the
darkness, she could make out his features a little.  For once, he
wasn't smirking.
     "There is no 'natural state' for a Q--not one that anybody
remembers.  Each of us has the option, of course, of taking
whatever physical configuration we desire.  I could appear to you
as anything you can think of, or as nothing you've even
envisioned, even in your wildest dreams."  He smiled.  "Is there
any particular configuration you would like me to take?"
     "You don't have to do that for me," Tarrant demurred.
     "No, seriously--I can appear as anything you wish."
     Tarrant hesitated. "I like the way you look right now best
of all."
     Q laughed. "What do you mean, 'best of all'--you haven't
seen any of the other choices!"  He seemed quite amused. "I can
be anything--the perfect quantum Q."  
     "I don't want you to be anything other than what you are
right now," Tarrant affirmed quietly.  
     "So you like this?"  He indicated, with a gesture, his
present form.
     Tarrant nodded. "Do you guys--Qs, I mean--get to choose how
you want to look if you appear humanoid?"
     Q frowned, a little ruefully, Tarrant thought.
"Unfortunately, no--there are limited combinations of humanoid
appearence.  And there are some..."  He paused, seeming to look
inward, "...prerequisites."  He laughed shortly, an unpleasant
sound. "I had to take what they were giving out."
     "You don't like the way you look?"  Tarrant readjusted her
pillow so that she could lie on her side and talk to him at the
same time.
     "Well--I'm not exactly the stuff of holo-vids, now am I?" 
     "You can't be serious!"  Tarrant was both amazed and amused.
"You'd want to look like Dack Liu-Desmia?  Or gar-Shish Melnack? 
Why?"
     Q fidgited. "I...would rather not discuss it."
     "You're insecure!" 
     "I am not--that's a human quality.  One that, thankfully, I
am without."  Q sounded miffed.
     "Vulnerable, then--Oh, come on, Q!  I know you like humans,
and I know how lonely you get sometimes.  Being omnipotent isn't
all bread and circuses, now is it?"
     "I've never been lonely in my life."
     "No--that's why you're always here, on this ship.  Because
you don't get lonely. I know how lonely you get, when you've seen
it all and done it all, because you see and do it all alone!"
     "You know?  How do you know?"  Q was beginning to get angry,
Tarrant could feel it; his anger pulsed between them, a living
thing.
     She touched his silk-clothed forearm.  "Because of how you
kissed me on Dronogar Seven...."
     Dronogar Seven....standing under the arches of the ballroom,
a glass in her hand, Tarrant had turned to survey the crowd of
wise, peaceful Dronogans calling in their new year.  When she had
turned again, she raised her glass to Q, standing beside her,
resplendant in the requisite Dronogan ritual robes.  "To the
angry gods, that they might be appeased," she had intoned, as was
the custom.  
     "And to you, my dear--" He had smiled at her. "I must
confess, you look absolutely stunning."  
     "Thank you for bringing me."  Tarrant touched his arm,
feeling the warm skin so close underneath.  Her fingers moved up
his arm, and then around his neck, as her other hand joined the
first.  She stood for a long moment, simply looking at him.
     "What are you doing?" His voice had been hushed, expectant.
     And then she had kissed him: pressing her opened mouth to
his, feeling the impulsive, beating life underneath her hands,
the silkiness of his dark hair when she slid her fingers into it.
She had pulled away for a moment, to stare at him, and then he
pulled her again into his embrace, returning the caress she had
offered, his hands holding her face to his as his tongue gently,
so gently, coaxed her lips open.  She had felt the shocking,
intense desire leap from his body to hers, scorching her like
sheet lightning, and where she was pressed so tightly to him, she
could feel the unmistakable physical signs.  She had wanted him
so badly, it was a physical pain....
     "I don't know what you're talking about," Q said. 
     "I think you do know--I think you know and you're afraid to
admit it, because if you do, you won't seem as all-powerful as
you'd like me to think."
     "Oh thank you Counselor Troi for that very entertaining
spate of meaningless psychobabble," he spat, angrily. He threw
back the covers and got out of the bed. "I have never asked you
for help in all the time I've known you, and when I do--"
     Tarrant got out of the bed and faced him across the floor. 
"I told you--you could stay here with me, at least until the
Mayor Emeritus calms down a bit!  What are you getting all upset
about?"
     Q was silent for a moment.  When Tarrant had gotten out of
her bed, the computer had sensed the movement of her body's heat
signature and had turned up the lights a little.  She could see Q
standing across from her in those silk pajamas.  The fabric was
very fine and soft, the cut of the garment relaxed, and she could
discern the outline of his body underneath the cloth.  His
shoulders looked broad and hard, and she was sure that his belly
was flat, muscular.  
     "I have never met a more infuriating humanoid in all of my
lengthy and considerable existence," Q was saying slowly, as he
crossed the room and took her into his arms. "I do not know why
you continue to irritate me so much--"
     "--malice is the other side of love," Tarrant pointed out.
     "I'm not capable of love," Q countered.  His hands were on
her waist, his long fingers holding her close to him.  "I'm far
too jaded for that!"
     "You are capable of it--" Tarrant assured him, running her
hand through his hair and down his face.  "--of that and much
more.  When I think of all the covert help you've given this
ship, times you've gotten us out of situations when it seemed
hopeless--"
     "Stop saying those things," Q said. "You'll ruin my
reputation." He kissed her, a long, deep kiss that lit fire in
her belly.  Tarrant clutched his shoulders and pulled him tighter
against her; she wanted to crawl inside him, stay there.
     "You know, for an omnipotent being, you really are a good
kisser," Tarrant told him, brazenly nipping his bottom lip with
her teeth.  "And you know, I would very much like to take you to
bed now, if you're ready for that sort of thing."
     "Oh, I don't know," he said, teasing her. "I don't know if
my omnipotent self could stand the strain."
     But then there was nothing else to say, for they were
clasped in each others' arms, moving blissfully together, Tarrant
exploring every inch of him to see what kinds of things he liked,
and how much he liked them, and when he begged her to stop. He
was surprisingly human in his desires and his needs, but his
skill at these particular pleasures were definitely otherworldly. 
He relished making Tarrant feel things she would have previously
thought impossible.
     Much later, lying in each others' embrace, Tarrant lazily
smoothed his chest with the palm of her hand. "I didn't know you
could do that sort of thing," she teased.
     Q turned to look at her. "Oh, really?" One of his eyebrows
went up. "What do you think we Qs do all day?  Play chess and
misplace galaxies?"
     "What's it like?"  Tarrant wanted to know, "Between two Qs,
I mean?"
     Q smirked. "I don't know--I never had a relationship with
any of them--you, on the other hand--"
     Computer dimmed the lights.

                         THE END     
--
JoAnne
("Oh night that was my guide, oh night! more loving than
	the rising sun..."
	St. John of the Cross)