Gateways 07_ What Lay Beyond - Diane Carey [67]
Q sighed heavily. “Kathy, do you want to hear the story or just go right to bed without any supper?”
“Q, please. A favor.” The sound of a child’s voice issuing from her own lips was driving her crazy. “Restore me to my adult image. Your talking down to me this way doesn’t help my listening skills any.”
“All you needed to do was ask,” he said, maddeningly. In a heartbeat, they were on the porch Janeway had glimpsed earlier, both in the surprisingly comfortable rocking chairs. Between them was a small wicker table bearing, as Janeway had guessed, a pitcher of lemonade and two glasses with ice and slices of lemon. Moisture condensed on the metal pitcher and slipped silently down the side.
“No stories. No teasing.” Suddenly Q was wearing a trench coat and a fedora. “Just the facts, ma’am.” Just as suddenly, he was in his Starfleet uniform.
On the lawn in front of them, the little boy Q’s child, her godson romped with Barkley/Fluffy. She wanted to hear about him too, but she needed to learn about the Iconian gateways first.
“The facts are these, and they’re very simple. We liked the Iconians. We wanted to help them.”
“We, or you?”
“Oh, I can’t shoulder all the blame for this one,” said Q. “There were others involved. We gave them technology, and they used it for benevolent purposes. Everything was working according to plan. Then, somebody got mad at them.” He sighed. “A feeling I know all too well.”
“So, in the end, their own technology the technology you gave them was their destruction,” said Janeway.
“Well,” and he squirmed a little in his rocking chair, “kind of. I’m not supposed to tell you everything.”
“Well, for Heaven’s sake, please at least tell me something!”
Q hesitated, choosing his words with care. “The technology that enabled them to become the fabled “Demons of Air and Darkness’ was what caused other civilizations who didn’t understand their technology to become afraid of them. And that led to the downfall of their civilization.”
Janeway wondered what the difference was between “destruction” and “downfall of their civilization.” Then she inhaled swiftly: Q was hinting that the Iconians hadn’t become extinct. That was a choice tidbit of information, but she kept silent about it.
Instead, she asked, “Then why did you give them something so powerful?” In over two hundred thousand years, no known civilization had come close to re-creating the transportation system of the Iconians. She’d reviewed the information Picard had provided, as all Starfleet captains had soon after the incident. What was it Captain Donald Varley had said, on those poignant records? Something about being a Neanderthal looking at a tricorder?
“It wasn’t.” Q sipped his lemonade and watched his son with affection.
“Excuse me?”
“It wasn’t that tremendous a piece of technology.” He shrugged.
“Kathryn, I continue to manifest myself and the Continuum in ways that you can readily comprehend. You keep forgetting that. You think that this” he waved an elegant hand down his torso”is the real Q. That this happy, tranquil scene in front of you is the real Continuum. It’s but an illusion. Remember, Kathy, my little q was able to pull planets out of their orbits when he was but a baby.”
He cocked a meaningful eyebrow in the direction of his playful son. Janeway felt suddenly chilled, as if a dark cloud had passed over the sun.
“Do you mean to tell me,” she said, slowly, “that all the Q Continuum gave the Iconians was the most casual piece of technology?”
“Bravo!” Q clapped his hands enthusiastically. Janeway was suddenly dressed in a black robe and wore a mortarboard on her head. The tassel flipped from one side to another as if by unseen hands.
“You graduate at the top of your class!”
At once, the outfit was gone and Q had sobered slightly. “I wouldn’t even go so far as to call it technology, really,” he continued. “That’s too grandiose a term. You’ve got no children of your own not that you didn’t have the chance, you know but perhaps you are familiar with some archaic toys with which children of yesteryear used