It appeared as if this once-loving couple was at each other's throats.
No one could figure out why. It wasn't as if Kerin had suddenly sprouted horns, or Sehra a tail. Yet now, when he looked at her, it was with a cool and critical eye, as if seeing her in a new light. And when she would look at him, it was with a burning suspicion that invariably would set the two off again. Eventually the arguing would subside, and they would apologize to each other. Increasingly, though, it seemed that these apologies were coming more from a sense of form and a reluctance to call a halt to ceremonies for which they had so devoutly fought.
"It will pass," Graziunas said confidently to his wife, but it was not a confidence he felt in his heart. He had seen the love light in his daughter's eyes, and now something was eclipsing that light. He tried to speak to her of it, but she was cool towards him. Her attitude was not something he took especially well to, but he had no idea how to deal with it. Sehra had always been an obedient, loyal child, and he'd rarely even had the need to raise his voice to her. So this new attitude of hers--this antipathy towards her husband-to-be--left Graziunas confused.
After one angry spat, Graziunas sandbagged his daughter and demanded an explanation. "Has he said something to you?" he demanded.
"Nothing specific that he said, no," she replied sullenly.
"Something he did, then. Some action." "Nothing he did." "What, then?" She paused. "I just don't like the directions his thoughts have been going," she muttered.
"His thoughts? Gods, girl!" Graziunas threw up his arms in frustration.
"A man is supposed to police his very thoughts now in order to satisfy a woman? Doesn't that seem just a bit unusual to you? Doesn't that appear to be a tad unreasonable?" "I suppose..." she said reluctantly, but she was still uncertain.
Similar discussions took place between Kerin and his father, as Kerin spoke of coming years and deterioration, and his father--in his frustration--spoke of splitting his son's head open wide, like a ripe melon.
And at night, a voice whispered doubt and uncertainty into Kerin's ear, and into Sehra's ear, even as it spoke words of affection to Lwaxana Troi.
That night, Graziunas and Nistral were visited as well. The visits took on a decidedly unreal aspect to them, and each of the men was not certain what had happened to them in their sleep. They only knew that they awoke the morning of the sanctification ceremonies with their hearts hardened towards their opposite numbers, and their tempers on hair triggers.
"Isn't it beautiful?" asked Lwaxana Troi.
Q and Mrs. Troi stood at the edge of a cliff overlooking a vast jungle. "The Genesis Planet," said Lwaxana. "A thing of beauty, created by human hands." "It's edifying to witness this," Q said, "since it always appears that human hands exist only to destroy, rather than to create." "There you go again," said Lwaxana, shaking her head. "It's statements like those that put people off, you know. If there's one thing that humans hate to be reminded of, it's their limits." "It's hard not to," Q protested. "There are so many." "Oh, honestly..." "It's true!" said Q. Lwaxana walked along the edge of the cliff and away from it, up towards a clearing. Q followed her. "Think of it. There's frailty of form. Vulnerability to aging and death. Dependence on technology.
Warlike tendencies..." She raised a scolding finger. "Not any more." "Oh, nonsense," scoffed Q. "They give lip service to that conceit, but underneath, they're as warlike as their ancestors. If they truly believed in peace, they would carry no weapons." "Then, they would be unprotected!" protested Lwaxana.
"Throughout the history of mankind," Q replied, "there have been a relative handful who have been genuinely peaceful. And they are notable for being willing to die rather than lift a hand against their fellow man. They would not carry weapons because they would rather die than use them. Those were true men of peace. Picard considers himself an idealist, but he would not be willing to die on behalf of his ideal." "Well," said Lwaxana, "if the Enterprise had no weapons, then my daughter would be unprotected. I can't say that I'd be pleased about that." "You could protect her," Q said.
She stopped and looked up at him. "What do you mean?" "It's every mother's dream," he said. "The ultimate expression of love. Don't tell me that there haven't been nights when you lie awake, thinking of your daughter out in the middle of deep space. Facing unknown danger at every turn. Her only protection being a--" and he glanced around, "a shell of metal that's only as good as the human hands that made it. There you are, night after lonely night, knowing that this ship could become her coffin just like that," and he snapped his fingers. "Don't tell me you haven't thought about Deanna meeting some hideous death deep in the airless reaches of space. And you might not even know for--" "I'd know," she said darkly. For the first time all of her confidence and her "bigger-than-life" airs evaporated. She touched her temple.
"I'd know here," and she tapped her heart, "and here. A part of me would just... just shrivel and blacken and die. Don't think I haven't thought about it. Don't think I haven't dreaded it.
She's chosen her life, and I support it, and whenever I see her I... I do anything except let slip to her what really gnaws at me. A day doesn't pass that I don't think about getting that feeling. A feeling I don't even know, yet which I'd recognize immediately. The feeling that tells me that my baby will never come back. So I... I busy myself with..." Her hands moved in vague circles as she looked around the lush and thriving tropical world. "I busy myself with rituals and duties and Betazoid society. With dusting a pointless clay pot, or keeping the Holy Rings shiny. Holy Rings," she laughed sourly. "No one cares about them. Not even me, really. They're in a box in the back of my closet. I tell myself it's for security reasons. And it's all so that I don't dwell on my own loneliness, and on the hideous inevitability that I might, someday, be lonelier." She was silent for a long moment. "I've never spoken to anyone of this, not even Deanna. It shows how much I trust you." "It's comforting to know that someone on this ship does," he sighed. "All the others think a world of evil of me, despite all the good I can do." She watched a bird sail overhead, making a distant, cawing noise. "What you were saying before... about always protecting Deanna... what did you--?" He didn't seem to hear her. "They don't trust you, either. They don't trust us as a couple." Her breath caught in her throat. "Are.
we a couple?" she managed to get out.
He turned towards her. "This world is supposed to represent beginnings? The start of something?" "Yes." "This world... this room," and he made an impatient noise. "The computers of the Enterprise try to imitate the abilities of the gods. Of beings like myself. They create something from nothing and applaud themselves for their skill. Phaw!
It's like a human child learning to crawl and congratulating himself on achieving the be-all and end-all of existence. Picard and the others take arrogant pride in this, yet would have no truck with me and my "arrogance," even though I'm capable of far greater than this with the barest wave of my hand." He went to Lwaxana and took her by the shoulders. Where once he had seemed reluctant even to touch her, now he seemed quite comfortable with it.
"You need your consciousness raised, Mrs.
Troi." He gestured.
The holodeck seemed to explode around them and then coalesced into a shimmering tunnel of colors that sped by them at blinding, even frightening, speed.
The air was filled with a roar, a scream: the scream of a universe dying and being born, all within the same moment.
Before her eyes, within her mind, stars crashed together and leaped outward once more. Suns burned bright, cooled, and collapsed into themselves all within the blink of an eye. Planets crackled into existence, and there were life forms--gods, so many, all at once, overlapping and throbbing with newness and age. There were amorphous beings that undulated across orange ground, a green sky hanging in the background. There were entities the size of mountains whose hearts beat once every century, who took a breath every millennium, who had existed from before the beginning and would be there beyond its end.
And she saw the innate insanity of life in the galaxy, arguing over borders and frontiers.
How could there be any part of space that "belonged" to any specific species, because space had always been and would always be, long after the races that had staked their claims had vanished.
Space spun outward, ever outward. There were galaxies beyond reach, galaxies beyond understanding, populated by beings that redefined the word alien.
Expanding ever outward, tickling the infinite, waltzing with eternity. Life, and more life, and beyond that was the unknowable, the incomprehensible, except, my God, she was beginning to understand, and it was all so simple.
Lwaxana Troi sat down hard.
She felt the jolt from the bottom of her spine to the top of her head, and it snapped her eyes into focus. She looked up, and there was Q.
He was eating a nectarine.
"That," he said, "is an inkling of what it is to be me." The holodeck had returned to the jungle setting that was in quiet preparation for the sanctification ceremonies due to begin shortly.
It was as if the visions had never been, and indeed, maybe they hadn't. Lwaxana's heart was pounding, her mind racing desperately to keep up.
"I don't... that's incredible..." she began.
"It is, isn't it. I once shared a fraction of my power with Riker. His mind, of course, did not have the strength or subtlety to come to terms with the full ramifications. But you, Lwaxana Troi--I would share far more with you.
Imagine. If you shared in this power, you could be aware of your daughter at all times. Be there to help her in an instant, if she needed it.
Constantly safeguard her, and all who accompany her. The possibilities are endless for you to protect your ungrateful daughter..." "Ungrateful?" Lwaxana looked up. Her voice sounded thick to her, as if she had rocks in her mouth. "What do you mean, ungrateful?" Q sighed loudly. "Your daughter.
everyone on board this ship, really... would love to take your freedom of choice from you. Without so much as a by-your-leave, they would have me leave.
They don't want to expose you to me. They don't want you to be with me. They hold before them the shield of love. They're doing it all for love; love is their great motivator.
Love that would deprive you, dear Lwaxana, of your right to choose. What I feel for you, however, is unselfish." "Are you saying you... love me?" Her voice was low and hesitant.
"Need you ask?" said Q.
She moaned softly, the world becoming a soft haze around her.
"All this," Q told her, "all that I have shown you--you can be one with it. Your so-called loved ones drown you with selfishness and offer you nothing. But I give to you unselfishly, and offer you everything." "Why me? Why, in all the cosmos, have you chosen me?" "Gods need no explanations," Q told her archly. "When you become one, you will understand. I warn you, though. If you do accept this offer--you will see the others for what they really are. They will seem small, even insignificant, to you. When you stride through the great road of eternity, you'll see the small bumps along the way for what they truly are. You'll realize the truth of all things, and that can never be undone." She smiled. "Will you tell me why a nectarine holds the answer to the secrets of the universe?" "My dear," he said, "you won't even have to ask. So... do you want it?" He took her hands. "Are you ready to leave behind the petty concerns of mortality?" "I... I don't know," she said. "I mean it's... it's such a big step, I..." The waterfall nearby hissed open.
Lwaxana pulled her hands from Q as she spun. Standing there were Picard, Riker, Deanna, various ambassadors, and all the members of the Tizarin wedding party. Deanna reacted with surprise as Picard said, "Mrs.
Troi! Anxious for the sanctification ceremonies to begin?" She felt a flush of guilt, as if she'd been caught in the act of something. "Oh, yes," she said. "We certainly are." "We?" said Picard with curiosity.
She glanced behind her. Q was gone. She turned back to the captain and smiled lopsidedly. ""We" as in "all of us."" "Yes, of course," said Picard. He didn't quite understand Lwaxana's slight jumpiness, but on the other hand, at least Q wasn't around. At least the sanctification could go smoothly, and tomorrow would be the wedding, and they would be done with this business already.
Ten minutes into the ceremony, all hell broke loose.
Chapter Nineteen
Picard smiled at the assemblage before him.
All were elaborately dressed in the colors and robes of the Tizarin, their respective colors declaring their house allegiance. Diplomats and other spectators stood off to the side.
The captain held in front of him the Tizarin sacred book of matrimonial procedure.
All of the ceremonies were spelled out there in depth, in twenty-seven languages including English. It was not surprising for such an aggressively star-spanning race as the Tizarin to be alert to the language requirements of all walks of life.
