Star Trek: The Q Continuum (17 page)

Riker was shocked by the man’s bloodthirsty ravings. “That’s not what we’re here for,” he said forcefully, “and that’s not what this ship is about.” He pitied Faal for his failing health and frustrated ambitions, but that didn’t condone advocating genocide. “Mr. Barclay, return Professor Faal to his quarters.”

“No!” Faal wheezed. He tried to stand up, but his legs wouldn’t support him. Barclay hurried around to Faal’s side, but Faal just glared at him before shouting at Riker again. “I won’t go! I demand to be heard!”

“Shields down to thirty-four percent,” Leyoro interrupted. “Shall I call Security to remove the professor?”

“Do it,” Riker ordered. Lieutenant Barclay, wringing his hands together, looked like he wanted to sink through the floor. Riker turned his back on both the irate scientist and the embarrassed crewman. He had more important things to deal with.

Like saving the
Enterprise.

Cool night air blew against Picard, chilling him. Far beneath him, moonlight from no less than two orbiting satellites reflected off the shimmering surface of a great expanse of water.
Where am I?
he thought, trying to orient himself.

He and Q were no longer in the subatomic realm they had exited only a heartbeat before, that much was certain. Without even knowing where he truly was, he could tell that this was more like reality as he knew it. The coolness of the breeze, the taste of the air, the comforting tug of gravity at his feet, all these sensations assured him that he was back in the real world once more. But where and, perhaps more important, when?

He quickly took stock of his surroundings. He, along with Q, appeared to be standing on some sort of balcony overlooking a precipitous cliff face that dropped what looked like a kilometer or so to the still black waters of an enormous lake or lagoon. The balcony itself, as green and lustrous as polished jade, seemed carved out of the very substance of the cliff. As Picard leaned out over the edge of a waist-high jade railing, intricately adorned with elaborate filigree, he saw that similar outcroppings dotted the face of the precipice, each one packed with humanoid figures, some looking out over the edge as he was, others dining comfortably at small tables as though at some fashionable outdoor café. A sense of excitement and anticipation, conveyed by the hubbub of a hundred murmuring voices, permeated the atmosphere. Picard got the distinct impression that he and Q had arrived just in time for some special occasion.

Jade cliffs. Two moons. A gathering of hundreds in caves dug out of the face of a great, green cliff.
The pieces came together in his mind, forming a picture whose implications left him reeling.
“Mon dieu!”
he gasped. “This is Tagus III. The sacred ruins of the ancient cliff dwellers!”

“Well, they’re not exactly ruins at the moment, Jean-Luc,” Q said casually, “nor are they really all that ancient.” Picard’s self-appointed tour guide sat a few meters behind him at a circular table set for two. Q sipped a bubbling orange liquid from a translucent crystal goblet and gestured toward the empty seat across from him. A second goblet rested on the jade-inlaid tabletop, next to a large copper plate on which were displayed strips of raw meat, swimming in a shallow pool of blue liquid that could have been sauce or gravy or blood for all Picard knew. He didn’t recognize the delicacy, nor did he expect to if this alien time and place was truly what it appeared to be.

The jade pueblos of Tagus III,
he marveled,
as they must have been nearly two billion years ago.
He had studied them for years, even delivered the keynote speech at an archaeological conference devoted to the topic, but he had never expected to witness them in person, let alone in their original condition. The Taguans of his own time had strictly forbidden any outsiders to visit the ruins, keeping them off-limits to archaeologists and other visitors ever since the Vulcans conducted their own ill-fated dig on the site over a decade before. The ban had frustrated a generation of scholars and historians, including Picard himself, for whom the celebrated ruins remained one of the foremost archaeological mysteries in the Alpha Quadrant. Possibly the oldest evidence of humanoid civilization in the galaxy, at least prior to the groundbreaking and still controversial work of the late Professor Richard Galen, the ruins on Tagus III had provoked literally millennia of debate and speculation. Before the Taguans decided to deny the site to offworlders, there had been at least 947 known excavations, the first one dating back to 22,000 years ago, almost 18,000 years before the rise of human civilization on Earth. The legacy of the ancient beings who first made their mark on this very cliff had puzzled and intrigued the galaxy since before human history began.

And here he was, visiting in the flesh a wonder of immeasurable age that he had read about ever since he was a small child in Labarre. Picard recalled that once before Q had offered to show him the secrets of Tagus III, the night before Picard was to speak at that prestigious archaeological conference. Seldom had he ever been so tempted by one of Q’s insidious propositions, although he had ultimately found the strength to reject Q’s offer, both out of respect for the Taguans’ deeply held convictions and his own habitual suspicions as to Q’s true motives. He’d be lying to himself, however, if he didn’t admit just how enticing the prospect of actually setting foot on the site had been.

Now that he really was here, he could not resist trying to absorb as many sights and sounds as he was able. No matter the circumstances of his arrival, and despite his compelling desire to return to his ship as expeditiously as possible, the archaeologist in him could have no more turned away from this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity than the starship captain could have accepted a desk job at the bottom of a gravity well. He had to witness all there was to see.

Besides, he rationalized, the Taguans’ twenty-fourth-century mandate against visiting aliens would not go into effect for a couple of billion years or so….

He took a closer look at the people crowding the balconies beside and below him. Whether the Taguans of his own time were actually descended from those who had left their presence marked upon these cliffs, as they steadfastly maintained, or whether they represented a subsequent stage of immigration or evolution, as suggested by the findings of the Vulcan expedition of 2351, was a question greatly debated in the archaeological community. Indeed, it was this very issue that had inspired the modern Taguans to close off the ruins to outsiders, in an attempt to protect their vaunted heritage from the “lies and fallacies” of non-Taguan researchers.

Judging from what he saw now, it appeared that the Vulcans were correct after all. The Taguans he knew were characterized by turquoise skin and a heavy layer of downy white fur. In contrast, the figures populating this historical vista, clad in revealing silk garments of diverse hues, looked quite hairless, with smooth, uncovered flesh whose skin tones ranged from a pale yellow to a deep, ruddy red. Their faces were remarkably undifferentiated from each other, bearing only the essential basics of humanoid features, without much in the way of distinguishing details. Two eyes, a nose, a mouth, a vague suggestion of lips and ears. The vague, generalized visages looked familiar to Picard, but it took him a moment to place them.

Of course,
he realized after a quick search through his memory. The inhabitants of ancient Tagus bore a distinct resemblance to the unnamed humanoids who had first spread their genetic material throughout the galaxy some four billion years before his own era. He well remembered the holographic image of the original, urhumanoid who had greeted him at the completion of his quest to finish the work of Professor Galen. Could it be that the people of the jade cliffs were the direct descendants of those ancient beings who had indirectly contributed to the eventual evolution of the human race, the Klingons, the Vulcans, the Cardassians, and every other known form of humanoid life? If so, then the ruins on modern-day Tagus were even more important than he had ever believed.

A thought occurred to him, and he turned from the railing to address Q, who took another sip from his goblet. “Why aren’t they noticing us?” Picard asked. He explored his own very human features with his hand. They felt unchanged. Looking down, he felt relieved to see that his Grecian garments had been replaced by his familiar Starfleet uniform. “We must stand out in the crowd. In theory, Homo sapiens has not even evolved yet.”

“To their eyes, we look as they do,” Q explained. He drained the last of his drink, then refilled the cup simply by looking at it. “Given your own limited ability to adapt to new forms, I’m letting you stick with the persona you’re accustomed to. I hope you appreciate my consideration.”

“But this is what the ancient Taguans looked like?” Picard asked, gesturing at the crowds swarming over the cliff face.

“Actually, they called themselves the Imotru,” Q stated, “but, yes, this is no illusion or metaphor. Aside from you and I, you’re seeing things exactly as they were.” Q’s face remolded itself until he looked like another Imotru. Only the mischievous glint in his eyes remained the same. “See what I mean?” He blinked, and his customary features returned.

The peal of an enormous gong rang across the night, and a hush fell over the scene as the buzz of countless conversations fell silent. Picard could feel a sense of acute expectation come over the scene, drawing him back to the railing overlooking the great lake. Something was obviously about to happen; the teeming throng of Imotru assembled along the cliff were waiting eagerly for whatever was to come.

A spark of light way down upon the surface of the lagoon caught his attention. Picard heard a hundred mouths gasp in anticipation. A moment later, a string of torches ignited above the black, moonlit water, their flames reflected in a series of mirrors arranged around the torches, which formed a hexagonal pattern, cordoning off an open stretch of water, about seventy meters across, in the direct center of the dark lake. The polished mirrors reflected the light inward so that this single swatch of rippling water was illuminated as if by the afternoon sun, while the rest of the lagoon remained cast in shadow. A single swimmer, holding aloft the glowing brand she must have used to light the torches, floated amid the brightly lit pool she had created. With a dramatic flourish, she doused the brand to a smattering of cheers and stamping feet.

Was that it?
Picard thought, peering down at the lighted hexagon demarcated by the torches and mirrors. Based on the crowd’s reaction, he suspected not. There was still that keen sense of anticipation in the air, an almost palpable atmosphere of mounting excitement. Somehow he knew that what he had just witnessed was merely a prelude, not the main event.

Most of the assembled Imotru, he observed, were now looking upward, eagerly searching the moonlit sky for…what? An image from an ancient jade bas-relief, meticulously reproduced in the Federation database, popped into his head just as a thrilling possibility presented itself.
No,
he thought, disbelieving his own good fortune,
surely we couldn’t have arrived in time for that!

A roar rose from the crowd. Dozens of seated Imotru leaped to their feet, including Q, who joined Picard by the railing. “Look up, Jean-Luc,” he whispered. “Here they come.”

Picard needed no urging. He strained his eyes to spot the sight that had electrified the assemblage, the sight whose true nature he could scarcely bring himself to believe.
It must be them,
he thought.
It couldn’t be anything else, not here in this place and time.

Sure enough, his eyes soon discerned a flock of winged figures on the horizon, soaring toward them. The Imotru cheered and stomped their feet so heavily that Picard feared for the safety of the jade balconies, even though he knew that some of them had endured even into the twenty-fourth century. He found himself stamping his own boots, caught up in the fervor of the crowd. The winged figures drew ever nearer, much to the delight of the onlookers upon the cliff. “They’ve been gliding for two full days,” Q commented, “since taking flight from the peak of Mount T’kwll.”

Picard no longer doubted what he was about to behold. He could only marvel at the amazing twist of fate that had granted him this unparalleled chance to see a timeworn legend made flesh. “The fabled Sky Divers of Tagus III,” he whispered, his voice hushed. If this was no mere trick of Q’s, then he was about to make the most astounding archaeological discovery since Benjamin Sisko found the lost city of B’hala on Bajor.

Within moments, the fliers were near enough that he could see that, as he had hoped, they were in fact dozens of youthful Imotru men and women, borne aloft by artificial wings strapped to their outstretched arms. Silver and gold metallic streamers trailed from their wrists and ankles, sparkling in the moonlight. Were the wings made of some unusual gravity-resistant substance, Picard wondered, or were the Imotru lighter than they appeared, perhaps gifted with hollow bones like birds? Either way, they presented a spectacular sight, silhouetted against the twin moons or glittering in the night like humanoid kites.

The Sky Divers soared overhead, swooping and gliding in complex feats of aerial choreography. Each flier, he saw, gripped a shining blade in one hand, just as they did on the fragmentary bas-relief Picard now recalled so well. Despite the graceful ballet taking place above, his gaze was invariably drawn back to the dark waters at the base of the cliff—and the lighted regions within the radiance of the torches and mirrors. He felt his heart pounding, knowing what had to come next. His eyes probed the rippling surface of the lake, hunting for some sign of what lurked beneath.
Perhaps that part of the legend is just a myth,
he thought, unsure whether to feel disappointed or relieved. Professor Galen, he recalled, had theorized that the Sky Divers were no more than a symbolic representation of cultural growth and entropy.

Then it began. A single flier, chosen through some process Picard could only guess at, used his silver blade to sever the straps binding him to his wings while the crowd below bellowed its approval. The shed wings drifted away aimlessly, slowly spiraling down like falling leaves, as the young Imotru plunged toward the water below with frightening speed.

Trailing golden ribbons behind him, the diver splashed headfirst into the lake below, landing squarely within the brightly lit boundaries of the hexagon. On a hundred balconies, Imotru whooped and stamped wildly. Things had clearly gotten off to a good start as far as the crowd was concerned. Down in the hexagon, the triumphant diver kicked to the surface and impulsively embraced the lone swimmer who had waited there. His joy and exuberance were obvious to Picard even from more than a kilometer away.

One by one, following some prearranged signal or sequence, more gliders fell from the sky. The second diver used her arms and legs to guide her descent, also landing safely within the torch-lit target zone. The audience cheered again, although slightly less wholeheartedly than they had before. Still, the woman joined the other two Imotru in their celebration, splashing happily within the golden glow of reflected light.