Q & A - Keith R. A. DeCandido [75]
21
Gorsach IX
After the end of the universe
PICARD WALKED FORWARD, THE STONE WALLS around him widening. Then, suddenly, there was light, and the noise of cheering crowds was like a wall of sound.
The chamber was wide but not deep. A pathway bisected the room, surrounded on both sides by bleacher-style seats. Those seats faced a wall made up of metal gratings, with a red flag in the center emblazoned with a black representation of a falcon. In front of the flag was a small raised circular stage that faced the seats.
The audience was human, most a literal version of the “great unwashed.” Ordinary citizens who lived in abject poverty, without access to proper bathing facilities or a regular change of clothes—some barely with access to food—who came to these show trials not out of any sense of civic duty but because it was a source of entertainment in a life that had been made empty by oppression.
Pacing in front of the bleachers were four uniformed soldiers wearing full-body suits that were interwoven with circuitry enhancing their performance, as well as the ability to dispense drugs to engender loyalty. Picard found himself thinking of the Jem’Hadar, the soldiers of the Dominion, who had a dependency on ketracel-white. Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose.
The captain had been here before, or at least somewhere like it. When they first encountered Q, the entity had brought Picard and three of his officers to a place like this, a facsimile of a twenty-first-century third-world court. Where those whose guilt was predetermined were put on trial for purposes that more resembled entertainment than justice. These places had practiced their laughable form of jurisprudence—where guilt was assumed, and justice was a circus.
The crowd jeered at Picard, the guards motioned him forward. He walked up the two stairs to the stage and took a seat in the solitary chair. Picard was brought back here again. The captain thought, Plus ca change, indeed.
A tall man wearing an elaborate floor-length coat, an equally elaborate hat, and carrying a staff as tall as him, stood in the center of the space. Next to him was a diminutive man with a fierce face holding a gong. The shorter man struck the gong twice, followed by the tall man saying, “All present stand and make respectful attention to the honored judge!”
The crowd got to their feet even as a large angled platform came into view from the rear of the room. It hovered several meters above the ground, and a long bar served as a lever, giving the judge who sat in it free movement across the chamber. An elaborate throne sat at the platform’s center, two golden lion’s-head poles framed the front corners of the platform. Q sat, once again dressed in the elaborate red robes, red gloves, large necklace, and black hat that the judges of these courts wore. With a gesture, Q silenced the crowd and bid them sit.
“Well done, mon capitaine,” Q said as he floated in over the heads of the crowd. “I thought you’d never figure it out.”
That prompted jeering from the crowd. Some of the guards stepped forward, and they quieted down, though one or two still chortled and pointed at the stage.
Picard shook his head. “All of it. Farpoint Station, giving Riker the power of the Q, sending us to meet the Borg, sending me back to my Academy days, testing us with the anti-time vortex—even teaching Data to laugh—all of it was part of the preparation?”
Smirking, Q said, “Yes, Jean-Luc, all of it, and more. Sending microbrain through all those parallel universes, for example. That trick he used on the fissure was a necessary catalyst, and he wouldn’t have known to do that without that little jaunt I sent him on.”
Picard stared at Q in shock. In truth, at this point, nothing Q did really could surprise him. “You did that?”
“Of course.”
“Why?”
The crowd laughed at that, and one or two of them threw small items toward