Q & A - Keith R. A. DeCandido [61]
Cutting the thought off, he looked again at Galen. “What are you doing here?”
Laughing tersely, the professor said, “Where else would you expect me to be, Jean-Luc? Now come on, we have a lot of digging to do before the sun sets. And then we get to spend the night cataloging.”
“No,” Jean-Luc said quietly.
“I beg your pardon?” Galen asked in that imperious voice of his.
Looking around, Jean-Luc saw that they were in a deep recess in the ground of some planet or other. We’re on Phnadrux, his mind suddenly said, exploring the Phnodra ruins. But that was impossible.
He looked down, seeing the work boots he’d felt weighing his feet down, and the earth-toned civilian clothes he was wearing. “Civilian clothes”? What a ridiculous notion—these are the clothes I always wear, and I’ve been a civilian all my life.
But it was wrong. Picard knew this was wrong.
Nonsense, it’s as real as—
As what?
Now Galen sounded concerned. “Jean-Luc, are you feeling all right?”
“I’m fine,” he said with what he hoped was a reassuring smile. Making a show of wiping some sweat off his face, he said, “The sun’s just gotten to me a bit.”
Galen chuckled. “You used to have better stamina than that, Jean-Luc.”
“Look who’s talking, old man,” Picard said, returning the chuckle. “I believe the expression is ‘Eat my dust.’”
“That’s the spirit, Jean-Luc.” Galen put an encouraging hand on Picard’s arm and then moved on down the dig site.
As soon as he was immersed in his own section of the dig, Jean-Luc looked up. Something’s wrong. Richard Galen is dead. He died eleven years ago on the Enterprise after those Yridians attacked him.
“No,” he muttered to himself. “It can’t be. This is reality, this dig site. It’s real, dammit, as real as—”
Galen called from down the dig site. “You say something, Jean-Luc?”
“Just talking to myself, Professor,” he yelled back. Then, with a small smile, he added, “It’s my only guarantee of intelligent conversation.”
“Very droll, Jean-Luc. If there were two of you, you’d make one whole wit!”
The banter between them was comfortable, the good-natured jibes of two men who had once been mentor and student and now were peers, having worked together for decades.
No, he’s been dead for eleven years—and we never worked together. I graduated the Academy and went on to—
To what? Why couldn’t he remember?
He looked down at the relics that he and the professor had unearthed, including one piece of pottery that looked like it came from the Byrlax period. No, wait, it has the representation of the god of the harvest, and that means it has to be from the Torgox period.
Reaching down, he picked up the pottery shard and examined it. The hard clay felt real in his hand. And yet, it could not be real.
This is wrong. Yet this is right.
Instinctively, he focused on the pottery shard. Studied the intricacy of the etchings in the clay, the swirls and angles that represented how the Phnodra portrayed the god of the harvest. Lost himself in the artistry, the passion of the worship and fealty that the long-dead Phnodra had for their harvest god.
Made it a perfect moment in time.
Everything slowed to a crawl. The gentle breeze all but stopped. It was just as Anij had taught him; Jean-Luc Picard heard her voice.
He focused on the pottery shard—
—which wasn’t there. It was a rock in a cave on Gorsach IX.
Standing up, Jean-Luc Picard realized that this was not the way it was meant to be.
And then the world exploded.
15
Somewhere…
JEAN-LUC PICARD FOUND HIMSELF STANDING IN A bright room.
No, not a room. A pure white space. A place that was both everywhere and nowhere.
He had been here before.
Once again, he called out to the one who simply had to be responsible for this, especially since he was the one who’d brought Picard here the last time, under the guise of it being the afterlife.
“Q! Show yourself!”
“Of course, Jean-Luc.”
Picard turned around to see Q, dressed in the same white robes he had fashioned for himself when he’d brought Picard here more than a decade ago, after the Lenarians almost killed him. “What