Star Trek: The Q Continuum (31 page)

The doctor attending to the Andorian, a tall man with a bald dome, glanced down at the children and rolled his eyes. “Marvelous,” he muttered sarcastically. “Children, no less. We’ll be getting cats and dogs next.” Curiously, Milo did not detect irritation from the man, or any other emotion; it was almost like he wasn’t really there.

Looking around, Ensign Daniels spotted Dr. Crusher deeper inside the facility, directing her medical team like a general on a battlefield. “Doctor!” he called out, weaving through the throng. “I have Professor Faal and his family.”

A nurse rushed up and handed Dr. Crusher a padd. A report on one of the patients, Milo assumed. She glanced at it quickly, tapped in a few modifications, then handed it back to the nurse, who hurried away to see to the doctor’s instructions. Dr. Crusher took a deep breath before focusing on the security officer and his charges. “Good,” she said. “I’ve been expecting them.” She nodded at Milo’s father. “Give me just a second, Professor, then follow me.” Her sea-green eyes surveyed the room. “Alyssa, take over triage until I get back. Make sure the EMH looks at those radiation blisters on Lieutenant Goldschlager, and tell Counselor Troi to join me as soon as she finishes up with Cadet Arwen.” She took custody of Faal’s arm from the security officer. “Thank you, Ensign. If you’re not needed elsewhere, we can really use an extra pair of hands. Contact Supply and tell them to beam another load of zero-G plasma infusion units directly to sickbay. We can’t replicate them fast enough.”

“Yes, Doctor,” Daniels promised. “First thing.”

“Come with me, Professor,” the doctor said, leading them away from the main crush of the medical emergency ward to an adjacent facility, where they found a row of child-sized biobeds as well as what looked like a high-tech incubator unit. The pediatric ward, Milo realized unhappily. He felt like a patient already and he hadn’t even been injured yet. “Here, let me help you with her,” Dr. Crusher said to him, bending over to lift Kinya from his grateful arm, which he stretched until its circulation returned. Kinya squalled at first, but the doctor patted her on the back until she got used to her new address. “That’s a good girl,” she cooed, then wiped her own forehead with her free hand. “Thank you for coming, Professor. We’re in a crisis situation here, obviously, but I want to make sure you and your family are properly cared for.”

“Never mind that,” Faal said. His face looked flushed and feverish. The effects of weightlessness, Milo wondered, or something more serious? “What’s this all about, Doctor? I demand an explanation.”

Dr. Crusher glanced down at Milo, then decided to choose her words carefully. “To elude the Calamarain, Commander Riker has decided to take the
Enterprise
into the outer fringe of the barrier. He believes that our engineers have devised a way to provide us with some protection from the barrier, but it seemed wisest to place all telepaths under direct medical observation.” She nodded toward the listening children. “I don’t think I need to explain why.”

She didn’t need to. Milo knew how dangerous the galactic barrier could be, especially to anyone with a high psionic potential; just because he resented his father’s work didn’t mean he hadn’t paid attention to what his parents had hoped to accomplish. Even humans, who were barely telepathic at all by Betazoid standards, sometimes had their brains fried by the barrier, and now the
Enterprise
was taking them right into it! Milo shuddered at the thought. The battle with the clouds—with the
Calamarain,
he corrected himself—had to be going badly if Commander Riker was desperate enough to fly into the barrier instead.
We should have never left Betazed,
he thought.
We’re all going to die!

His father sounded just as upset by this turn of events, although for different reasons. “But he can’t,” he exclaimed, “not without my wormhole.” His chest heaving, he leaned against the central incubator and groped for his hypospray. “That’s the whole point. That’s why we’re here.”

“Right now Commander Riker is primarily concerned with the safety of the ship,” another voice intruded. Milo sensed Counselor Troi’s arrival even before he saw her framed in the entrance to the kid’s ward. She walked toward the other two adults, taking care to step around Milo. “I can assure you, Professor, that the commander has considered every possibility, including your wormhole theory, and he truly believes that he is acting in the best interests of everyone aboard, including your children.”

“But he’s not a scientist,” Faal wheezed. The hypospray hissed as it delivered a fresh dose of polyadrenaline to his weakened body. “What does he know about the barrier and the preternatural energies that sustain it?”

The counselor tried her best to calm him. “Commander Riker may not have specialized in the hard sciences, and certainly not to the extent you have, but he’s consulted with some of our best people, including Commander La Forge, and he and Lieutenant Commander Data and Lieutenant Barclay feel tha—”

“Barclay?” Faal exploded, his voice sounding perceptibly stronger than seconds ago, and Milo felt Troi’s heart sink. He didn’t know who Barclay was, but the counselor instantly realized that she had made a mistake in mentioning his name. “Do you mean to tell me that my own extensive research into the barrier and its effects is being trumped by the scientific expertise of that clownish incompetent? By the Holy Rings, I’ve never heard such lunacy.”

“Please, Professor,” Dr. Crusher said firmly. “There is no time to debate this. The decision has been made and I need to prepare you and your family before it’s too late.” She gestured toward one of the kid-sized biobeds. “What I’d like to do is set our cortical stimulators on a negative frequency in order to lower the brain activity of you and the children to a more or less comatose state during the period in which we are exposed to the psionic energy of the barrier. The same for you, Deanna,” she added. “Along with the extra shielding devised by…Data and Geordi…that should be enough to protect all of you from any telepathic side effects.”

She sounded very certain, but Milo could tell she wasn’t nearly as confident as she pretended to be. Didn’t she know she couldn’t fool a Betazoid? Maybe the doctor and the counselor should actually listen to his father. Despite his failings as a parent, Milo figured his father probably knew more about the barrier than anyone in the Federation.

Lem Faal sure thought so. “This is so ridiculous I can’t even begin to describe how insane it is,” he insisted, returning his hypospray to the inner pocket of his jacket. “It was bad enough when Riker just wanted to retreat from the barrier, but to go forward into it without even attempting my experiment…”

“Perhaps you should worry less about your experiment and more about your children,” the doctor said heatedly. Milo sensed her anger at his father’s skewed priorities. She lowered Kinya onto one of the miniature biobeds. His sister sat sideways on the bed, her small legs dangling over the edge. “According to Starfleet conventions, I don’t require your consent to protect your family during a red alert, but I do expect your cooperation. Deanna, please escort the professor back to the adult ward. Have Nurse Ogawa find biobeds for both you and Professor Faal. I’ll be with you in a few minutes, after I’ve prepared the children.”

Counselor Troi laid her hand on the man’s arm, but Milo’s father had exhausted his patience as well. He reached out unexpectedly and snatched Dr. Crusher’s combadge off her lab jacket. “Mr. La Forge,” he barked, speaking into the shiny reflective badge, “this is Lem Faal. Generate the tensor matrix at once and prepare to launch the magneton generator. This is our last chance!”

Geordi’s voice emerged from the badge, sounding understandably confused. “Professor Faal? What are you doing on the com? Has Commander Riker authorized this?”

“Geordi, don’t listen to him!” Dr. Crusher tried to grab the badge back from Faal, but the obsessed scientist batted her hand away impatiently.

“Forget about Commander Riker,” he shouted, the badge only centimeters away from his face. Saliva sprayed from his lips.

“We’re so close, we have to try it. Anything else would be insane.”

“You’re out of line, Professor,” Geordi told him emphatically, “and I’m busy. La Forge out.”

“No!” he shouted into the badge, even though the connection had already been broken off. “Fire the torpedo, blast you. You have to fire the torpedo!”

A hypospray hissed as Dr. Crusher applied the instrument to his left shoulder. “Dad!” Milo cried out as his father stiffened in surprise. His face went slack as his eyelids drooped and he sagged backward into the doctor’s waiting arms.

“Don’t worry,” she assured Milo. “I just prescribed him an emergency tranquilizer. He’ll be fine later.” With the counselor’s help, she guided his father’s limp body out of the pediatric ward into the primary facility. An Octonoid crewman with both his lower arms in slings hopped off a biobed to make room for Faal.

Despite the narcotic, the scientist’s anxiety did not abate entirely. Although his eyes remained shut, his lips kept moving, driven by a powerful sense of urgency that not even the tranquilizer could quell. Standing next to the biobed, his ears turned toward the unconscious man, Milo could barely make out his father’s delirious whispers. “Help me…we’re so close…you can’t let them stop me…please help me.”

Who is he talking to?
Milo wondered.
Me?
“I don’t know how to help you, Dad. I don’t know what I can do.”

“You mustn’t blame yourself for any of this, Milo,” Counselor Troi told him, placing a comforting hand upon his shoulder. He could sense her sincerity and concern, as well as an underlying apprehension concerning Lem Faal. “Your father has simply been under a lot of stress lately.”

That’s one way of putting it,
he thought, some of his resentment seeping through. He wondered if the counselor, who was only half Betazoid, could tell how angry he got at his father sometimes.

“We should hurry,” Dr. Crusher said, interrupting his moment with the counselor. She glanced at Lem Faal’s sleeping form and breathed a sigh of relief. “I want to get the children put under first,” she explained to Troi, “then I can look after you and Professor Faal.”

Unsure what else to do, Milo followed the two women back into the pediatric ward, where he watched Dr. Crusher tend to Kinya. His little sister squirmed and cried at first—watching her father collapse had upset her once again—but the doctor put her to sleep with a sedative, then stretched the toddler out on the biobed. Retrieving a pair of compact metallic objects from a pocket in her lab coat, she affixed the shiny gadgets to Kinya’s small forehead. “These are only cortical stimulators,” she told Milo while simultaneously checking the readings on the display panel mounted above the bed. Milo didn’t know what she was looking for, but she appeared satisfied with the readings. “They won’t hurt her, I promise.”

“I know,” Milo said. “I believe you.” In some ways, Dr. Crusher reminded him of his mother. They both always seemed to know what they were doing, and they didn’t talk down to him. He appreciated that.

“Too bad Selar transferred to the
Excalibur,”
she commented to Troi as she made a final adjustment to the devices attached to Kinya’s head. “Vulcans are supposed to be resistant to the barrier’s effects, despite their telepathic gifts. No one really knows why, although there are any number of theories.”

Milo was too worried about everything else to get interested in how Vulcan brains worked. At the doctor’s direction, he climbed onto the empty bed across from Kinya’s. From where he was sitting, he could see his father sleeping in the next ward over. To his surprise, he saw his father’s face twitching, the fingers of his hand flexing spasmodically. Lem Faal looked like he was waking from a nightmare.
How long is that tranquilizer supposed to keep him down anyway,
Milo wondered,
and should I alert the doctor and the others?

Counselor Troi must have sensed his uncertainty because she turned and followed his gaze to where his father rested fitfully. Her eyes widened as Faal’s entire body convulsed, then sat up suddenly. Running his hand through his disordered hair, he shot darting glances around the sickbay like a hunted animal searching desperately for an escape route. His bloodshot eyes were haunted and a thin string of saliva dribbled from his lower lip. Milo scarcely recognized his father.

“Beverly!” Troi called out, attracting the doctor’s attention. The counselor rushed toward the open doorway between her and the adult ward. “Please, Professor, you have to stay where you are. We’re getting closer to the barrier. The doctor has to prepare you.”

At her mention of the barrier, Faal’s wild eyes filled with purpose. Gasping for breath, he lowered himself off the bed and started to stagger across the crowded sickbay toward the exit. Caught up in their own emergencies, the various nurses and patients paid little attention to the gaunt, determined-looking Betazoid making his way through the maze of bodies and medical equipment. Milo hopped off his own bed and hurried after Troi, watching her pursue his father. “Milo, wait!” Dr. Crusher called to him, but he didn’t listen to her.

Younger and healthier than the dying scientist, Counselor Troi quickly caught up with Faal and grabbed his elbow from behind. “You have to stay here,” she repeated urgently. “You’re not safe.”

Faal spun around with a snarl, a glint of silver metal flashing between his fingers. Milo recognized the object immediately: his father’s ubiquitous hypospray, loaded with polyadrenaline.

No,
Milo thought, disbelieving.
He wouldn’t!

But he did. Amid all the noise and activity, he couldn’t hear the hypospray hiss when his father pressed it against her throat, but he saw her mouth open wide in surprise, watched her face go pale. It happened so fast there was nothing anyone could do to stop him. She clutched her neck instinctively, releasing her hold on Faal, and swayed dizzily from side to side, her gravity boots still glued to the duranium floor. She started hyperventilating as the polyadrenaline hit her system, huffing rapidly in short, ragged breaths. Her eyes glazed over and the veins in her throat throbbed at a frightening pace. Milo guessed that her heart, her lungs, and her entire metabolism had gone into overdrive, burning themselves out. She was swaying so wildly that she surely would have hit the floor if not for the absence of gravity.