ONLY HUMAN 

CHP. II: KETAYA

by Alara Rogers; published by Aleph Press

The following is section 6 of 12 of ONLY HUMAN, my alternate universe
Q novel.  If you've missed any parts, the entire story is available
through anonymous ftp at ftp.netcom.com, in the directory /pub/al/
aleph/trek, under the name HUMAN2.ZIP.  HUMAN1.ZIP, the first chapter
of this story, is also available there.  The files are pkzipped using
PKWARE's version 2.04g.

Other sites where you can obtain the rest of this story:

ftp://ftp.europa.com/outgoing/mercutio/alt.fan.q
ftp://aviary.share.net/pub/startrek/incomplete
http://www1.mhv.net/~alara/ohtree.html
http://www.europa.com/~mercutio/Q.html
http://aviary.share.net/~alara

This is an alternate universe novel, and it's long. I mean *looong.* In 
this chapter and all future ones, we will learn things about the 
Continuum which are contradicted by the Voyager episode "The Q and the 
Grey". This is because that was a miserably bad episode which 
contradicted so much Q canon that I have decided that, for my purposes, 
it didn't happen. None of the "facts" about the Continuum established in 
that episode have any bearing on the Continuum background shown in Only 
Human.

For those who have not read Chapter 1 and want to jump right in anyway,
the story is based on the episode Deja Q, where Q lost his powers; except
that in this alternate reality, he never got them back.  It's been
three years since then, and there have been some changes.  In exchange
for protection from various enemies he made while omnipotent, Q has
been selling his services as a scientific advisor to the Federation for
the past three years.  He assisted the Federation in developing a weapon
against the Borg; as a result, casualties were lighter at Wolf 359, and
Picard didn't become Locutus, someone else did. On the other hand, recently 
Picard died when a plasma grenade fused his artificial heart. This know-
ledge was the final straw to push an already-deeply-depressed-and-  
borderline-suicidal Q over the edge into a fairly nasty suicide attempt
by drinking hydrochloric acid.

Fortunately or unfortunately, Q survived, perhaps by the graces of his
personal guardian angel/demon, the Q who got him kicked out of the Con-
tinuum.  This Q has "hired" a mortal psychologist for Q, a Vulcan woman
named T'Laren who was raised on Earth (in Texas, to be precise.) Thus
far, T'Laren is something of a mystery; we know that the other Q, whom
she calls Lhoviri, saved her life and sanity and offered her something
she could not refuse in exchange for taking on this assignment. Lhoviri
also gave her a ship, called Ketaya, basically a luxury yacht with a
souped-up engine. It is T'Laren's belief that Q's depression is in part
caused by the fact that everyone on Starbase 56, where he's been living
for the past three years, hates him, and that he needs to leave the base
in order to recover. Though Q is not entirely sure he believes her-- he
believes his depression is simply caused by the fact that he is, in com-
parison to before, "blinded, maimed, exiled, and condemned to die--" he
is willing at this point to try anything.  As Chapter 2 opens, Ketaya
has just left Starbase 56 with Q and T'Laren aboard. 


*                              *                                *

     Q was not normally in the habit of oversleeping, if only
because he preferred to be fully dressed and alert by the time
T'Laren showed up to wake him. It was the tenth day of their
journey, long enough that they'd fallen into a somewhat regular
pattern. When it was half an hour later than his usual time for
coming to breakfast, and still there was no sign of him, T'Laren
began to get worried. She touched her combadge. "Q?"
     There was no answer. "Computer, Q's status."
     "Q is asleep in his quarters."
     T'Laren frowned slightly. The computer would have told her
if it had detected anything unusual about that sleep. Perhaps he
was simply overtired. On the other hand, there were a potentially
infinite number of reasons why the computer might not be able to
detect some sort of attack on him. She decided to check.
     When he didn't respond to the door chime, she palmed the
door open and went in. He didn't respond to a knock at his
bedroom door, either. Now T'Laren was starting to become alarmed.
She went into the bedroom and walked quickly to the bed.
     There appeared to be nothing wrong with Q, except for the
fact that he was asleep. He had told her he was a light sleeper,
and indeed he had always responded directly to her calls before,
even when the call had just woken him up. Yet here he was, asleep
still after several calls, a door chime, a knock at the door and
with an intruder in his room. If T'Laren had been an assassin
that had managed to slip in, he wouldn't have had a chance.
     It was something of a clich‚ that humans looked vulnerable
when they slept, and there Q was no exception. The force of his
personality minimized his physical frailty when he was awake;
asleep, he looked terribly fragile, as if the slightest burden on
him would snap his thin frame. It was also a clich‚ that sleeping
humans looked peaceful, however, and that one Q did not live up
to. He was curled up in a semi-fetal position, arms and legs
positioned to protect as much of his body as possible. Even in
sleep he seemed somehow tense, frightened, as if he knew how
vulnerable he was. T'Laren raised an eyebrow. If Q was this tense
when he slept, no wonder he had nightmares.
     Of course, if he was this tense, he should be a phenomenally
light sleeper, once more begging the question of why he was still
asleep. She knelt by the side of the bed. "Q? Can you hear me?"
     "Mmm."
     That was an improvement. T'Laren took out her tricorder and
ran it over him, wondering if illness could explain his lethargy.
     The results were unmistakable, but she ran the scan twice
more anyway, just to be sure. She was no medical doctor, but as a
counselor she was thoroughly familiar with the effects of all
sorts of drugs on the human body. Q wasn't waking up because he
was heavily sedated. Genuinely annoyed, she reached out and shook
him roughly. "Q!"
     He blinked his eyes open groggily and scowled at her.
"...wha...?"
     "You are tremendously fortunate that I'm not an assassin,"
T'Laren said sharply. "I called you several times, and you didn't
respond. I could have stumbled over every piece of furniture you
own and still you wouldn't have awakened. How did you bypass your
replicator restrictions?"
     Q blinked at her several more times. He then rolled over on
his stomach, pulling the blankets over his head. "Go 'way," he
mumbled.
     T'Laren yanked the blankets off him and off the bed. She
then unceremoniously removed the pillow and dropped it on the
floor. By now Q was glaring at her. "Wake up and answer me," she
snapped.
     "Coffee," he muttered. "Serious coffee."
     "No coffee. How did you bypass the replicator restrictions?"
     "Get me a coffee and I'll consider answering you."
     "Answer me and I'll consider letting you have coffee."
     Q sat up slowly, rubbing his eyes. "Replicator, coffee."
     "Override, replicator."
     "Computer, code byzantium. Vulcans should be seen and not
heard. And make me a coffee."
     The replicator produced a coffee. T'Laren retrieved it
before Q could grab it. "What do you mean, `code byzantium'? What
have you done to my computers, Q?"
     "Locked you out of them. Give me my coffee and I'll let you
back in."
     T'Laren fought to master a stab of genuine fear. Ketayawas
completely dependent on its computers, and T'Laren was no
computer expert. If Q had locked her out of the computer system,
she was completely at his mercy. "Computer, give me current
system status."
     There was no answer. Q crossed his arms and smiled smugly.
"Now are you going to let me have my coffee?"
     The immediate reaction to an attempted power game, according
to the teachings of Surak, should be to refuse to play. For a
moment, T'Laren retreated within herself, quickly weighing her
options. She had mishandled this-- her refusal to let Q have his
coffee had been born of anger, not reason. Stupid of her. She
could never let Q get her angry, because when she was angry she
tended to behave autocratically, and any sort of coercion brought
out Q's stubbornness in full flower. Doubly foolish, because it
had never occurred to her that Q could get himself in a position
of power over her. She should have asked Lhoviri for computers
with Starfleet-level security on them, should have made sure
there was no way Q could get the upper hand. She ran through her
memories of Q's files, of the sort of behavior he'd indulged in
when he had power. It was not encouraging. 
     Silently she placed the coffee on a shelf, neither holding
onto it nor handing it to him. Demanding that he restore her
computer access would only worsen the problem. She retreated deep
into a Vulcan shell and waited to see what he would do.
     Q got up and took the coffee, then sat back down again and
sipped at it. "Really, T'Laren. How long did you think you could
keep me helpless? This is hardly a starbase. Cracking Ketayas
security codes was child's play."
     So far he had not threatened. She would therefore give him
the benefit of the doubt, and behave as if nothing had changed.
"How long did it take you?"
     "About a week to get into the system. I finished getting
around those silly restrictions last night. If you refused to let
me have a sedative, I thought I had better take matters into my
own hands."
     "I have explained my reasons. This incident provides
additional reason. You slept far too deeply. If an assassin had
gotten in here, you would have had no opportunity to call for
help."
     Q shrugged. "I miscalculated the dosage. I forgot that I've
been off them for over a week. It won't happen again."
     "I would have thought that you of all people, with your fear
of being dominated, would avoid a drug dependence as much as
possible."
     Q shook his head, sipping his coffee. "I'm not addicted,
T'Laren. I am perfectly capable of getting to sleep without
sedatives; I'm simply utterly miserable when I do so. If it's
important enough-- as it was during the preparation for the Borg
invasion, for instance-- I can voluntarily choose not to take
them."
     "Victims of drug addiction always say they can quit at any
time."
     "No, no. I didn't say I could quit at any time. I said I
*have* quit, when it was important enough, for periods of over
two months at a time. This is proven, recorded fact. I don't want
sedatives because I'm addicted to them; I want them because I
sleep terribly without them." He smiled again, nastily. "I think
you're just upset because I got around your attempt to dominate
me."
     "I have never tried to dominate you."
     "Perhaps that isn't what you call it. Perhaps you call it
`maintaining a proper patient-therapist relationship', or some
such. But I assure you, T'Laren, I am an expert on hierarchical
dominance patterns among mortals, and you have been trying to
dominate me. All the while telling yourself it was for my own
good, I'm sure. In fact, I'm positive that you *believe*
everything you do is for my own good. But occasionally, you are
wrong. And since you insist on trying to dominate me, you force
me to measures like this to convince you that you're wrong."
     "In order to prevent me from dominating you, you are forced
to try to dominate me?"
     Q ignored the sarcasm, his smile broadening. "And you don't
like it, do you? You don't like having someone else in control of
your life."
     That was definitely a threat. T'Laren shook her head. "You
are not in control of my life."
     "No? You know what Ketayas defenses are capable of, and you
know that they're controlled entirely through the computers.
There are quick-acting gaseous drugs that act on Vulcans only,
you know. There's any number of things I could do to you."
     "You could," T'Laren said calmly. 
     "And that doesn't make you afraid? You don't fear what I
might do?"
     He studied her face, openly looking for signs of weakness.
T'Laren showed him none. "Your fate is inextricably bound to
mine," she said. "As we have discussed on previous occasions. If
you are short-sighted enough to hurt me, and thus destroy your
only hope, I cannot stop you."
     Q stared at her for a second or so, and then smiled wryly,
shaking his head. "I should have known better," he said.
"Computer! Be kind to your pointy-eared friends. Authorization
Unlimited Ducks."
     T'Laren raised an eyebrow. "What now?"
     "I've restored your access." The wry smile returned. "I was
always willing to be an equal partner with you, T'Laren. I just
don't want you dominating *me*."
     She tested it. "Computer, travel status."
     "We are traveling warp six toward the Abister system.
Rendezvous with the Yamato will take place nine days from now."
     T'Laren nodded once, slowly, acknowledging her victory.
     "You're very good at this, you know," Q said. He got up and
walked over to the replicator. "Another coffee, this one with
more sweetener than I can possibly stand."
     "Clarify, please," the replicator said. "How much sweetener
can you stand?"
     T'Laren raised an eyebrow. "You've done more than rewrite
the access list. You've altered some of the programming, too."
     "Some," Q admitted. "I could stand about two lumps of sugar,
I suppose. Make it two and a half."
     "I would have thought you would have indeed known better by
now," T'Laren said. "What did you hope to accomplish?"
     "By rewriting the programming?"
     T'Laren merely looked at him. Q made a "you-can't-blame-me-
for-trying" shrug, smiling somewhat embarrassedly. "All right,
then. Not much, to be honest. I wanted you to know what it was
like, to be at someone else's mercy like that."
     "What makes you think I didn't already know?"
     Abruptly his expression turned serious. "And I wanted you to
stop acting like I'm some sort of child, that I'm too ignorant to
make decisions on my own welfare. Essentially I want you to stop
trying to control me."
     "I have not been trying to control you, Q. I've been trying
to help you. And if your solution to being treated as a child is
to engage in childish behavior, then you *are* a child, and
deserve to be treated as one."
     "You really believe that? That you haven't been trying to
control me?" He sipped at the second coffee, his eyes hooded.
     It wasn't true, strictly speaking. She *had* been trying to
control him, to some extent, for good reasons. T'Laren considered
whether or not he was rational enough at the moment to speak to
sensibly. 
     "The difficulty is the word `control'," she said. "You have
a pronounced allergy to anyone attempting to impose their will on
you. I understand this. But at the moment, Q, you are your own
greatest enemy. You are astonishingly short-sighted, seeking
instant gratification at the expense of long-range happiness. You
are subconsciously self-destructive. I understand that it's
difficult for you to let another person guide you-- all your life
experience counsels against it-- but your self-guidance is
obviously not working properly. Right now, you can trust me
better than you can trust yourself."
     "In other words, yes. You have been trying to control me.
Admit it."
     She did not quite sigh. "You're being irrational."
     "I'm being very rational. You're jumping to conclusions." He
put down the coffee cup and began to pace. "I feel like the boy
who cried wolf. Yes, I've tried to kill myself, fairly recently.
Yes, I've done a lot of things that, if one were observing the
situation objectively, one could say were probably self-
destructive or short-sighted. But I'm not being self-destructive
now, and as for being short-sighted... it's a common failing of
tightrope walkers. I need to focus all my attention on what's
right under my feet; if I try to look forward too far, I'll lose
my balance, and fall. T'Laren, I'm not going to be alive long
enough to *worry* about the long run."
     "You don't know that."
     "It's almost a statistical certainty." He faced her. "In the
past three years, my life has been threatened some twenty-odd
times. That makes about once every six weeks or so. My body is
physiologically in its 30's, and humans who die of old age do so
nowadays around 120, so I can expect about 90 more years of this.
If I faced death twenty times in three years, I will have done so
six hundred times in 90 years. About a third of those times will
involve grievous bodily harm, if the extrapolation holds up. Do
you truly think anyone can survive two hundred beatings,
stabbings, poisonings and stranglings?" Q shook his head. "I've
been lucky so far, T'Laren. I'm not going to stay that lucky. I
expect I'll last another two years or so, at most."
     "The statistical extrapolation is not necessarily an
accurate one; I would imagine that most of the beings with
sufficient power to determine that you'd been made mortal, and to
find you, would do so very quickly. If you live for ten more
years, by that time perhaps everyone who remembers you and cares
sufficiently to hunt you down would have tried already."
     "At which point maybe they'll repeat. Already the Mirou have
attacked twice."
     "Even still, it is not necessarily valid to assume that
events will continue for 90 years in the same fashion that they
have done in the past three. And even if they do... all the more
reason why you must learn to defend yourself, and not leave
yourself a vulnerability like an addiction to sedatives."
     "I'm *not--*" He caught himself before he started shouting,
and took an ostentatious deep breath. "T'Laren, I just woke up. I
am still parading around in my pajamas, I haven't had breakfast
yet, and I look terrible. Why don't we continue this discussion
in half an hour or so, after I've had a chance to turn myself
into some semblance of a social being?"
     T'Laren considered a second. Though the request sounded
superficially like a stalling mechanism or a strategic retreat,
she didn't think it was-- Q wasn't close enough to beaten to be
stalling. She nodded. "That's reasonable." 

     It was important to remain calm. If he started shouting at
her, he'd undermine his own argument. He would also have to try
to hold back from clever twists of wordplay. Being reasonable was
the key. T'Laren was a Vulcan-- she had to respond to reason.
     She was waiting for him in the kitchen, calmly sitting in a
chair with hands folded in her lap, watching him. Q ignored her
for a minute or two as he got himself breakfast. It was
undignified to argue while one was eating, and he wanted to be as
calm and dignified as possible, so he rushed through the meal,
aware of T'Laren's eyes on him.
     "You don't have to eat so quickly," she said. "I'm willing
to wait."
     He scowled at her, annoyed that she would call attention to
what he was doing. "Don't worry about it. I'm almost done."
     When he'd finished, he was still mildly hungry, but his own
patience wouldn't hold out. There was a debate to be gotten to,
and that took priority. He straightened up, made his expression
as calm as possible, and faced T'Laren. 
     "The point I wished to make, before we got sidetracked onto
a discussion of my probable lifespan, is this. I am capable of
being short-sighted and self-destructive, yes. But I'm also
capable of being reasonable, and I have been trying, very hard,
to be reasonable. I've let you direct me into all sorts of things
that I didn't want to do, because you gave me a convincing
logical argument why the benefits I'd get would outweigh what I'd
have to put up with to get them. So far, you haven't given me a
sufficiently convincing argument regarding the sedatives, and I
am no longer willing to let you have the kind of power over me
where you can just say something and I have to do it."
     She studied him for several seconds. "Was an attempt to
humiliate me a necessary component of your claim on this power?"
     Q sighed. "I wasn't *actually* going to do anything to you."
     "Your past record would have implied otherwise."
     "You're saying you don't think I've changed? That I'd go out
of my way to humiliate you just because I had the power to do
it?"
     "Your statements earlier, when you believed you had the
upper hand, implied that you would."
     "I was trying to scare you," he snapped, exasperated, and
then forced himself to calm down. Reasonable. Be very reasonable.
"T'Laren, I knew perfectly well I couldn't actually have done a
damn thing to you. If I'd pushed you far enough, you could easily
have overpowered me physically. We don't have any Vulcan-only
knockout gases that could act before you could have strangled me.
I wanted you to admit that you were afraid of what I might do-- I
was trading on my reputation there a bit, I'll admit-- and then I
would have given you your access back. You didn't make me see
reason-- you called my bluff."
     "Why was it important to you that I be afraid of you?"
     He shrugged. "I didn't say I'd changed *that* much."
     "Ah."
     "But that's not the point." Q leaned forward. "Look, I'm
sorry about that, all right? I wanted to frighten you to get you
back for throwing me in the airlock two weeks ago. Not the
loveliest of motives, I admit, but I swear I had no intention of
actually hurting you. I mean, I wouldn't have actually hurt you
even if I hadn't known you could have physically disabled me. I
didn't even *want* to hurt you. I just..." He felt as if he was
babbling, but she was staring at him. He had to say something to
make her stop staring like that. "I'm just so tired of always
being the one that has to be afraid."
     "If you wish me to treat you as a reasonable being, it would
be best if you would refrain from the petty little revenge ploys
in the future."
     He nodded. "All right. That's fair. I just... T'Laren, I
want to be an equal partner in this. I've been living under
conditions of increasing restriction for three years now. You got
me out here by promising to give me control over my own life. If
you weren't going to do that, I might as well be on Starbase 56.
So..."
     "So you took matters into your own hands."
     "I have the abilities. I might as well use them. It took me
a lot of work to achieve my current level of expertise with
computers, and it's something I feel I have the right to be
genuinely proud of. Technology was never a major interest of mine
when I was still omniscient-- all I could really carry over was a
knowledge of the physical laws technology is based on. What I've
done, I've done the long, boring, human way, and I've done it
successfully. So why shouldn't I use what I've learned?"
     T'Laren's expression softened, very slightly. "Q. You don't
need to be so defensive, really," she said, the first gentleness
entering her voice since the conversation began. She unfolded
from her aloofly watching pose and leaned across the table
slightly, placing her hands on the surface. "I was not
criticizing you for giving yourself access to the computers-- I
can certainly understand why you did it. But you realize that it
creates problems. You are not always capable of determining what
is best for you."
     "So explain to me. I told you, I can be reasonable. If you
can give me a rational logical reason why I need to do something-
-"
     "You still won't necessarily do it. I have been explaining
to you repeatedly why you shouldn't take sedatives. Yet that was
the first thing that you did."
     "Because you don't know what you're talking about." He
barely kept from snapping at her. "You keep insisting that I'm
addicted to sedatives. I'm caught in a Catch-22 here-- my telling
you that I'm not addicted is apparently being used as evidence
that I am.  If I ask you if you're addicted to sedatives, and you
say no, that's hardly evidence that you are."
     "What a person who is addicted to drugs says about the state
of their addiction is irrelevant."
     "But I'm *not* addicted!" This had to be one of the most
frustrating arguments he'd had in some time. T'Laren was refusing
to see reason. He took a deep breath, marshalling the next plan
of attack. The story of the iolera was deeply embarrassing, not
anything he'd have chosen to share with her if he felt he'd had a
choice, but right now he judged it his only hope. "Let me tell
you a little story, T'Laren, so you know I know what I'm talking
about. All right?"
     "By all means." T'Laren leaned back and folded her hands in
her lap expectantly.
     He stood up and began to pace around the room, trying to
pick a place to start that would show him in the best possible
light. "This was, I don't know, maybe a year and a half ago or
so. It was after we defeated the Borg, and after they put me on
medical restriction. And on this particular occasion, I really
did not feel well. I was supposed to be talking to a group of
scientists, and with the exception of an Andorian named Thelkas
they were all potato heads. My head was killing me, I was in no
mood to deal with these morons, and wonderful Dr. Li refused to
let me have a painkiller. He said the problem was tension and I
should exercise. Well, that's all very nice for the long run, but
in the short run that would have made the problem worse, and I
needed something for my headache right then."
     "Perhaps you should have taken up the exercise some time
previously. If you had thought ahead..."
     "Right, right. But I didn't. As I've said before, it's
difficult to think ahead when one has a hard time imagining
surviving to the end of the week. So I was... um... not on my
best behavior."
     "I can imagine."
     "And most of the laughingly so-called `physicists' I was
talking to... There's a difficulty with the fact that my
reputation precedes me. I'm sure it never entered their tuber-
like minds that I didn't feel well. When one goes to question the
oracle, does it ever occur to one that the oracle could be having
a bad day? They seemed to treat me as if I were some legendary
hazard of space, that if they successfully braved the Scylla and
Charybdis of Starbase 56 they could return to their homes with
the booty of knowledge. It's an occupational hazard of being a
valuable resource-- people treat me as if I'm nothing but a
resource, as if I don't have any feelings of my own." He was
getting more and more upset, remembering. "Anyway, when Thelkas--
who was considerably less of a vegetable brain than the others
anyway-- showed me some personal consideration, I may have blown
it a trifle out of proportion."
     "In what way?"
     She had to ask that. "Um... Well, he asked me if I was all
right, that I didn't seem to feel well. And I... entertained him
with a lengthy description of the foibles of humanity, Dr. Li in
particular, the follies of Thelkas' fellow scientists, and the
difficulty of holding a coherent conversation when there are high
explosives going off behind one's eyes every so often. So he
offered to see if he could do anything for me. I expected him to
try to intercede with Anderson or something." 
     "I take it he did something else."
     "Oh yes." Q's expression became grim as he remembered. He
had trusted Thelkas, naive and desperate in his pain. "You've
read about this in my files?"
     "So far none of this story is ringing a bell. I don't recall
a Thelkas mentioned in your file."
     "All right, then. Thelkas came to me the next day, offering
to give me an Andorian herbal painkiller that, according to him,
was nontoxic and highly effective on humans. He claimed that he
carried the stuff on him, that it was a traditional Andorian
remedy for practically everything, and that he would have given
it to me yesterday but he'd wanted to check his computer for its
effects on humans first." Q leaned against the wall and put a
hand to his head, half-covering his face. This was the
embarrassing part. "You have to understand-- I wasn't thinking
clearly, my head hurt terribly, and everyone else was treating me
like a walking database. Thelkas was the only person who seemed
to be paying any attention to my feelings. Sometimes... I can be
very vulnerable to that."
     "It was poisonous?"
     "Depends on how you look at it. It *was* a highly effective
painkiller. Ever hear of iolera root?"
     Both T'Laren's eyebrows went up. "Yes."
     Iolera root-- Q had found out later, after what had
happened-- was in fact a traditional Andorian remedy for
practically everything. On Andorians, it acted as a mild
painkiller and muscle relaxant, producing a feeling of calm and
well-being. On humans, it was something else entirely. "You
probably know that you can't get iolera aboard a Starfleet vessel
unless you're medical personnel. But Thelkas came on an Andorian
vessel, a small science ship, and aboard an Andorian vessel you
can get iolera about as easily as you can get synthehol in
Starfleet. So he got the stuff on his ship and gave it to me...
and, in an unparelleled fit of idiocy, I took it without checking
its effects for myself."
     T'Laren's eyes were wide. "What happened?"
     "What you might expect." Q sat down. "Or maybe not--
actually, the story's a bit more complicated than what you might
expect. As one can imagine, I became quite deliriously happy as
soon as that stuff hit my system. Thelkas suggested that I go to
his ship with him, where he would give me another dose, and I
thought that sounded like a marvelous idea. He came very close to
walking out with me under Security's noses-- Thelkas, like most
of the scientists who came to see me, was a respected scholar and
had been through a number of security checks. There was no
connection between him and anyone who might want me dead. Also,
we were checking for shapeshifters by then, after the incident
with the Ceulan shapechanger back in my fifth month on the base
or so. There was no reason for anyone to believe he presented a
danger to me, so he wasn't watched as heavily as, say, the
Klingons were."
     "Oh." T'Laren nodded. "The incident *is* in your files; I
recall it now. The record simply states that a scientist drugged
and attempted to kidnap you; it didn't give his race or name. Or
that the drug was iolera. I'd been thinking it was a sleep drug
or a paralytic of some sort."
     "No. It was considerably worse." He shivered slightly,
remembering. "I had no will at all. I would have done anything
Thelkas told me to-- after all, he was such a wonderful person
who'd given me such happiness. Actually, not even that. I would
have done anything *anyone* told me to. I was madly in love with
the entire universe, and if someone had suggested that it might
be fun for me to walk out an airlock, I would probably have
cheerfully done so. Which was why I cooperated, when Security
rescued me and took me to sickbay-- it didn't enter my mind that
they were going to take the happiness away. I couldn't entertain
any sort of frightening thought-- it was as if I was suddenly
living in a universe where bad things didn't happen anymore. Not
even that I was invulnerable again-- *everyone* was invulnerable,
because nothing bad could happen."
     The memories disturbed and frightened him, but he could no
longer let them go. "And then they gave me the antidote... and I
became a raving madman, screaming at them to let me go. All I
wanted was to run back to Thelkas and get him to give me another
dose. It was all I could think about-- for *three days*. I
*wanted* to be enslaved again. I fought for it, I begged for it.
They had to put me in a restraining field, because I kept trying
to get free to go back to Thelkas, and they were afraid I'd hurt
myself." He broke his inward focus and looked at T'Laren, leaning
forward slightly. "Do you know what that's like? For someone like
me, who's fought to preserve the integrity of his own will for
*millions* of *years*, to be broken like that? I would have done
anything for the privilege of being made a slave again. Can you
*imagine* how it feels to know I'm that weak?"
     "Did they ever learn why Thelkas did it?"
     "Oh, that was easy. After they caught him, he tried to
protest that he hadn't known the drug would have that effect on
me, that he was trying to get me to his ship for treatment so no
one would find out his mistake... but Thelkas wasn't a very good
liar. They eventually got the real story out of him." He smiled
bitterly. "It's almost funny, really. Thelkas was one of these
people who worships knowledge. He'd been looking forward to
getting to talk to me for months, and he was angry at the fact
that I was being `wasted'-- that unworthy people were allowed to
take up my time, that I wasn't being handled properly. He wanted
to hide me away where he and people he deemed intelligent enough
to be worthy would have unlimited access to me, and he planned to
use considerably stronger methods than the Federation used to
make sure I did what I was told. Doses of iolera as rewards,
direct neural stimulation of the pain centers as punishment...
the man who I thought was the only one who treated me as a
sentient being perceived me as a commodity far more than anyone
else." Q shuddered, looking down. "I don't have much pain
resistance, but I like to think I have a strong will for a human
being... I always thought it would be difficult to really break
me. I could be forced to talk out of fear easily enough, but to
be broken to the point where I'd voluntarily aid my captors,
where I'd seek their approval... I never thought that could be
done. And then they told me what Thelkas had been planning to do
to me, what I'd wanted so much to run back to. He could have
broken me completely inside two weeks." He closed his eyes, his
hands clenching almost unconsciously.
     "And there was no indication in Thelkas' record that he was
capable of such a thing? People willing to kidnap and enslave
other sentient beings do not usually have normal psychological
profiles." 
     Q laughed bitterly. "Oh, there was nothing wrong with
Thelkas' morals. He wouldn't have dreamed of doing such a thing
to a real human being. No, it was a matter of definition. Thelkas
had some convoluted argument about why I didn't deserve the same
rights as other sentients-- I think it was something based on
reciprocity, that my species denied the rights of other sentients
and therefore forfeited any rights of our own. He'd had no
dealings with anyone who knew me when, I'd never done a thing to
him personally-- he was simply arguing from philosophy." He shook
his head. "In a way that made it even more horrible. I'd placed
my trust in someone who considered me to have fewer inalienable
rights than an animal."
     "That must have been horrible," T'Laren said gently. 
     He nodded emphatically. "Why do you think I didn't want to
tell you the story?" The embarrassment of his own stupidity
overwhelmed him, and he had to fight the urge to shudder again.
"It was bad enough to know I could be broken like that, but...
much as I despise the fact, I've learned that my body does have
an impact on my mind. It's horrifying, that a drug could rob me
of my will that way, but it's a hazard of being mortal that I
simply have to live with. I could have dealt with that alone.
But... how could I have been idiotic enough to trust Thelkas?
Someone has only to be nice to me for a few hours to have me
eating out of their hand? What was *wrong* with me? I know better
than that!"
     T'Laren's voice was very quiet, and somehow sad. "Are you
trying to tell me that you feel you cannot afford to trust me?
That you fear I might turn out to be another Thelkas?"
     Q blinked in surprise. It had never occurred to him that she
might put that interpretation on things, though now that she'd
said it he could see why she thought so. "No-- no. That isn't it
at all. T'Laren, I assure you, I'd never have gone with you if I
thought for a moment you might turn out to be like Thelkas. No,
that isn't the point of this story at all."
     "Then perhaps I'm missing something?"
     "The point is that I know what it's like to be addicted,
T'Laren. When I tell you that I'm not addicted to sedatives, it's
with full knowledge of what addiction is. I was lucky that I
couldn't get access to iolera root-- even after the first day or
so was over, and I stopped behaving like such a lunatic, I would
have done anything to get another dose. I require sedatives as
medication for a chronic condition of insomnia, not as a fix I
need. I can go without when I have to; I've done so for periods
of up to two months, as I've said. Can't you see the difference
between this and an addiction?"
     For a few moments T'Laren was silent. Q studied her, trying
to see what she was thinking, if she was showing any sign of
relenting. Of course, now he was in a position where it didn't
matter that much what T'Laren thought-- he could override any
restrictions she put on him-- but he didn't want to do it that
way. He wanted her to agree with him.
     "I think you misunderstand," she finally said. "I am willing
to concede your point that you may not be physically addicted to
sedatives. You are, however, dependent on them. They're a
chemical crutch that you don't need. Your problem is
psychological, not even psychophysiological but purely a function
of mind. And it is a bad idea to treat psychological problems
chemically. We should be attacking the cause, not the symptom."
     He stared at her in disbelief. "And how are we supposed to
do that?" he asked harshly. "I have nightmares because I'm
unhappy. Even if you're capable of helping me out of my
depression, which I doubt, it's going to take an awfully long
time. Am I supposed to go without sleep that whole time?" Q shook
his head. "I'm sorry, T'Laren. I'd like your approval, but I
don't need it anymore."
     "I thought you were going to be reasonable."
     "I've been reasonable! You're not being reasonable! Why
should I be reasonable when you aren't?"
     "Perhaps you should hear me out before assuming I'm going to
be unreasonable?"
     Q sighed in infuriated exasperation. "All right then! I'm
listening, do you have anything reasonable to say?"
     "`Unreasonable' is not a synonym for opinions you don't
agree with, Q."
     He stood up with such force that his chair fell over
backwards. "I don't have to listen to this."
     She nodded. "You don't. You don't ever have to listen to me.
One wonders, however, what you're doing out here if you don't
intend to listen to me."
     "You never listen to me! Why should I listen to you?
     "Because I am your psychologist, not vice versa. And I think
even you should be able to understand why a psychologist would
have a legitimate concern about your drug use."
     "For the last time, *I am not addicted to*--"
     "I'm not saying you're addicted!" T'Laren interrupted, her
voice raised and sharp. "Will you hear me out, or will you go in
your room and sulk?"
     Q sat down on the table, arms folded. "I listen raptly."