BEHIND THEM, ANTIMATTER explosions were still lighting up the solar system in all directions. Amazing that so little antimatter connecting with so little matter could result in such conflagration.
Getting away from the immediate vicinity was easy enough—the creature wasn’t watching for the moment, busy devouring the pure energy of matter/antimatter reactions among the asteroids, and therefore stardrive had a few extra seconds to ride the detonation shock waves and get back toward the saucer section. Easy, considering what had gone on so far today.
Reuniting the ships was something else.
Riker stood beside the science station where Deanna Troi was now sitting. She appeared disturbed, fatigued, aching, somber, like someone who had just heard bad news, but she seemed aware of the circumstances, perhaps too acutely aware.
Watching the disconnected saucer section loom toward them in the viewscreen, Riker felt a shiver of anticipation. This was the tricky part, the difference between pulling an ocean liner out of a dock and pulling back into one. Or maybe like docking one of those aircraft carriers the screen had shown them. Angle had to be right. Every linkage, hasp, and junctor had to line up exactly to its sleeve. Luckily Enterprise had computers made to do that. There was really no such thing as doing it manually, although that was the term they used for less-than-fully automated hookup. Really doing it manually would take all day and half the night. But for the moment Riker was glad Picard watched so carefully as the big ships approached each other, saucer at full stop, stardrive moving forward on inertia so as not to attract the entity’s attention. At no other time would they be more helpless than during those last five feet before hookup.
At the last moment a shock wave from the antimatter explosions in the asteroid belt washed across the two ships and pushed between them like a wedge.
“Reverse!” Picard sharply ordered, and beneath him the ship moved to comply. “Stabilize. Smartly now. We may not get another chance. Approach on tight-frequency tractor beams. Get us in there.”
“Aye, sir,” LaForge mumbled, sweating.
“Worf, assist.”
“Yes, sir,” the Klingon acknowledged. He left Data sitting on the deck steps and slid in behind Ops.
Data blinked and watched, but made no attempt to regain his position; in fact, Riker noticed a thick preoccupation on the android’s part.
Now what? he thought. Look at him. He looks as though a straight answer would do him as much good as it’d do me. Maybe he tried too hard. Maybe he took me too seriously and let that thing get inside and poach him. Next time I’ll keep my mouth shut.
Maybe.
The deck rocked beneath him. He grabbed for the bridge rail and looked at the viewscreen barely in time to see an artificially lighted view of the saucer section’s docking sleeve. Then the viewer went black and disengaged automatically.
“Docking complete, Captain,” LaForge reported. “All sections, all junctions show green. Docking chief reports all secure.”
“Signal acknowledgment. All stop. Well,” Picard said with a sigh, “that was a blasted fiasco if ever I saw one. Evidently there’s not going to be an easy way out of this one.”
“Orders, sir?” Riker asked.
“Captain!” Yar blurted. “It’s gone!”
The bridge might as well have whirled under them like a giant lazy Susan, they all turned so fast.
“Gone?” Picard repeated. “Just like that?”
“Even faster.” Yar glowered over her equipment as though angrier at the phenomenon’s disappearance than she had been about its attacks. It was allowed to go away, but not without checking with the security chief first. “No trail, no residual energy, nothing. Popped out of existence.”
“Charming. It’s playing some bloody game with us. Well, I’d say this confirms Data’s hypothesis about interdimensionality with rather alarming panache.”
“Maybe we should get out of the area while we can, sir,” Riker suggested.
“Oh, no, not on your life, Number One,” the captain responded, “and I mean that quite literally.”
“But if—”
“Can’t you see? It’s demonstrated quite clearly that it’s no insect and it’s no shark. It’s a trapdoor spider. We move—it springs. All it has to do is wait. Wait until we make a move. And we’re not going to.” He turned to the waiting faces of the tactical bridge crew and authoritatively said, “All stop. Shut down all systems including internal with the exception of basic life support. Turn off everything that can conceivably be turned off. Suspend experimentation and testing of any kind unless I specifically order it, all food processors, all extraneous utensils, terminals, holographs, intraship communication, generators, plumbing, everything. Reduce ship’s heating and lighting to bare minimum. Keep sound levels down. Tell people to get where they’re going, then stay there. We’re going to shut down the turbolifts within ten minutes and use only maintenance ladders. Have you got that?”
Riker tilted his head dubiously. “I don’t know how long we can hold out like that.”
Picard’s dark eyes thinned. “Cities have endured blackouts before, Mr. Riker,” he said, “and so shall we. Ever since submarine warfare and the blitz, groups of people have had to endure periods of excruciating silence.”
“Those were trained military personnel, sir. It’s going to be harder on—”
The captain silenced him with a toss of his head and unexpectedly lowered his voice. “Don’t be insulting.”
“Right. Sorry, sir.” Riker cast an appropriate gesture at Worf and said, “Shipwide systems comply. I’ll check everything personally.”
The captain nodded. “As soon as we get back to the main bridge, I want a complete systems check in preparation to feed antimatter from the reserves into the main tank to make up for our loss just now. I want it to go smoothly, Riker. That’s a lot of energy changing places, and we don’t want it detected. Notify engineering. They’ll have their hands full with the exchange and the charge up to warp power.”
“Aye, sir, I’ll see to it.”
“All hands, prepare to transfer command—”
“Captain—” Troi came to life abruptly and pushed herself unsteadily from the seat. Had she not caught herself on the command chair, she might have fallen, but there was something more than physical stamina keeping her on her feet.
The captain caught her arm. “Counselor, you stay where you are. I want to have Dr. Crusher look at you again.”
“Later, sir, please. Captain, may I speak with you privately?” she asked, with a small glance at Riker. “This is . . . feels very personal to me, sir.”
The captain indulged in a long study of her eyes, her expression, the degree of strength with which she clamped her hand on his arm—something she didn’t seem to realize she was doing—and he measured her veracity like a lie detector. His gauges were his experience, hard-earned abilities to judge what he heard by the expression of those who were saying it, the tone of voice and the slight quavers in it, the flickering of eyes, and the slight tightness of lashes. He believed her, believed this wasn’t just a whim, that she had something critical to say and was still rational enough to know the difference.
He sensed Riker approaching, knew the first officer was looking over his shoulder, taking advantage of his height to look at Deanna Troi and silently ask if perhaps he could also be involved in her secrets. Only that made the captain’s decision tricky.
“Very well,” Picard said. He took Troi’s arm and steered her toward the turbolift. “All hands, transfer command back to the main bridge immediately. Riker, you square off with Data. Get some answers. We’re going to hit this problem from both fronts. Counselor, my ready room. The rest of you . . . stations.”
Riker watched perhaps too longingly as the captain escorted Troi from the dim battle bridge. He could live without her; perhaps he would have to. He’d called a halt to all relationships when he accepted this post, staring at twenty years of single-mindedness, and he’d kept that promise to himself well enough. Until he stepped onto the ship itself. Until she floated out of nowhere toward him. Suddenly the years ahead appeared more a test than an assignment. Was it unwise for long-term commanders to commit themselves to relationships? This whole business about having families aboard ship . . . it was so new. Did anyone know if ship’s commanders reacted differently when their loved ones were on board than they did if they could divorce themselves from everything but the dangers at hand?
Deanna would know. And she’s the only person I can’t ask.
He was jolted from his thoughts as two forms stepped by him toward the turbolift, and he shook himself. Before him, Yar and Worf were on the lift with the captain and Troi. Brushing his left arm, Geordi had just stepped by with Data in tow.
Catching Data’s arm, Riker stopped him. “Data, you stay here.”
LaForge started to turn, protectiveness roaring up in the set of his jaw and shoulders, and only a bark from the captain caused him to leave Data behind in the hands of a less-than-compassionate superior. “Coming, sir,” he said, his tone low, as though to warn Riker.
Perhaps it wasn’t insolence, and perhaps it wasn’t a warning. But Riker couldn’t blame him if it were.
The turbolift doors shut with a vacuumlike cussshhh.
Data remained facing the lift for a wishful few seconds. Actually it was longer than a few. Enough longer that the pause was obvious. When finally he began to turn, he was at full attention—a stance recognized by both of himself and Riker as painfully unnecessary.
“How do you feel?” the first officer asked.
“Functional,” Data said, “though weak.”
“Want to sit down?”
“No, thank you, sir. I shall stand.”
The better to walk away from you, my dear. Come on, Will, make your case and be done with it. “Do you have a report on what happened to you?”
That wasn’t exactly what he hoped would come out when he opened his mouth, but Riker faced Data squarely with the question and told himself he’d find a way to bring up the other subject sooner or later.
“I have some new information, sir,” Data said, “though not all clear.”
“I’m listening. Make it concise.”
Data nodded once, then thought about the right words.
“The phenomenon,” he began slowly, “is like me.”
“Like you? Some form of—” Riker stopped himself and was embarrassed when Data filled in the blank.
“A mechanism,” the android said. “Crafted by someone else. A living tool, fabricated at so high a level of engineering that it may or may not be a life-form.”
“Were you speaking to it, then?”
“I was in contact. I dare not say there was a conversation, however. It took from me what it pleased and gave me only what it chose. I was receiving, but I was unable to transmit. Perhaps I was too far away from the source. Or perhaps I was simply not built to be a transmitter . . . as I hoped I would be.”
“Data, we don’t expect you—”
“Perhaps if I go out alone in a shuttlecraft, I could gain more intimate contact.”
“Don’t be crazy,” Riker blurted. “Nobody’s going out in anything, not even you.”
Until it came out, Riker didn’t think about the callous implication of that sentence, but now he held his breath and hoped Data bleeped over it.
“This mechanism is dangerous to us, sir. I am no longer in doubt of that,” the android went on. The dim lighting of the battle bridge caught the starkness of his coloring as he stood there on the upper deck. “It must only be a matter of limited time before it learns to differentiate between general matter in this area of space or that nearby solar system and the construction of the Enterprise. It will demolish the ship, just as it demolished the Gorshkov three centuries ago.”
“Now wait a minute,” Riker said, holding up his hand. “We aren’t sure that’s what happened to the Gorshkov.”
“I am sure. It will destroy us in a singularly violent manner as soon as it can. It intends to destroy us as soon as it can find us again.”
And he was absolutely sure, if that could be gleaned from his expression. He was even more impassive than usual, and Riker had to look hard to see any flickers of emotion. Data might be an android, but his face was usually pleasantly animated, and the blankness bothered Riker. Data’s habitual demeanor would have reassured him a little.
Slowly he asked, “Did you get any clues as to its nature?”
“It was built eons ago, and it contains the destructive power of several starships,” Data said flatly. “Most disturbingly, though, sir, it is encoded with what it believes is permission to use that power at its own discretion.”
“Oh, great,” Riker moaned. “I’ve seen bulldozers with more discretion than that thing.”
Data paused, and if he could be in a mood, he wasn’t in one for chitchat. The pause was long enough to make Riker uncomfortable, enough to make him look up.
“Go on,” Riker said with a touch of weariness.
“As I said, it may be a level of machine evolution so high that it is virtually alive.”
An ugly prospect, Riker thought, but luckily he didn’t say that. “And?”
“And . . . it destroys mechanical vessels which contain energies it recognizes, while preserving the life forces of the living beings involved.”
“But why? Why would it roam the galaxy sucking up life essences? Who would build a machine to destroy ships but preserve the stuff of living consciousness? That doesn’t make sense.”
“Unknown, sir. But it does make sense from a defensive point of view. We do not as yet know if it has the same reaction to whole planets as it does to vessels. If so, it may be a weapon of defense that turned on its own creators.”
“Is that a real possibility?”
“No, sir, it is only a guess.”
“But it unconditionally preserves the life—what?—life forces? Of the beings it absorbs?”
“Not only that, sir, but the entire consciousness. Memories, desires, everything. They are, in effect, still alive in there.”
Folding his arms, Riker leaned forward on the bridge rail and pondered the idea. “Imagine not being enslaved by time. Mankind’s been looking for that kind of Utopia for eons. Absence of want, hunger, fear, pain, death . . . I wonder what it looks like from inside.” For several seconds he simply gazed at the idea. It sounded idyllic, even Biblical. How many people looked up toward space when they thought of heaven? He pushed himself off the rail and held up a finger. “There are two things going on here,” he postulated. “Correct me if I’m wrong—”
“I will, sir.”
“Uh . . . yes. Are we witnessing two kinds of contact here? You with the mechanism or whatever it is, and Troi with the life essences trapped by it?”
Data’s birdlike eyes darted sideways for a moment in a disturbingly computerish look of calculation. He stood completely still for a few seconds, then canted his brows and said, “That does seem to describe the evidence, sir. Counselor Troi seems to be the path of least resistance for the life essences in their attempt to contact us. They do seem to be separate from the entity which buoys them. I should have thought of it myself.”
“You’re doing enough,” Riker said, trying to ease the stiffness he sensed under Data’s tone even now.
Then the android said, “No, sir . . . not enough. I may have technologies within myself that even I do not know about and do not know how to use yet. Somehow, the mechanism and I have congruous responses to each other. I believe—” And he paused again, this time even more movingly. He didn’t look at Riker, but rather fixed his eyes on the forward screen, now a grainy gray wall. “On impulse-idle with only flight shields up, the mechanism did not home in on us. I believe it fixed on me and was then able to focus on the ship—”
“Don’t flatter yourself,” Riker interrupted. “It found Troi first and me next. You’re third on its taste test, so don’t start blaming yourself. It’s too . . . human.”
The proffered lightness didn’t come off. Rather the contrary. Data’s sudden silence was ponderous.
Riker rubbed his hands together and made a second attempt. “Look, Data, about before . . . ”
“If I may say, sir,” Data said quickly, “your sense regarding my nature is correct. It seems I . . . have been deluding myself. I am . . . apparently more mechanical than living.”
Riker moved across the small space between them and tried not to look like a superior officer circling an underling. When it did start to look like that, he stopped and simply faced Data. “Now, listen. I want us to understand each other.”
“Yes, sir,” the android said clearly. “It is not your fault that . . . while I cannot be alive, I am apparently programmed to be self-deluding about it.”
The statement rang in the empty battle bridge. Several seconds ticked by, accentuating the fact that there was no real answer.
Data straightened then, as though to slough off the discomfort of those seconds. “Whoever built the entity out there knew what it is to be alive. It knew life and knew how to preserve life even when the body is gone. And it clearly recognizes machines for what they are.”
Shaking his head, Riker sighed. “You’re not making this easy on either of us.”
All at once Data fidgeted, actually changed the position of his feet.
Riker held out a palm and said, “At ease, will you?”
Data glanced at him. After a beat he crossed his wrists behind his back and looked at the floor. “It seems that I too am a mechanism,” he said introspectively. “A utensil. Not a creature. Not only may I not be human, but I may not even qualify as a life-form. I may be less alive than the first protozoan that murmured through Earth’s primordial muck.”
With a sympathetic frown, Riker fought to digest the concept as Data perceived it. He felt suddenly crushed by his own mistake, and by his own inadequacy to ford this crossing.
“I am a versatile device,” Data went on, still gazing at the floor. His voice was completely without the emotional rasp that would have entered a human voice by now, and yet there was a heaviness in his tone that lent meaning to his confession. The harsh but meager lighting on the battle bridge played poorly upon the soft and pale contours of his brows and jawline. “I am an instrument. No real human can do the things I can do. That alone should have been proof to me long before this.”
“Part of being human,” Riker attempted, latching on to a tiny hope, “is accepting your talents as well as your faults. That’s one equation no machine can compute.”
“Please, sir,” the android said, looking up now, a move that went through Riker like a wooden stake. “If indeed I am nothing but a machine, then I cannot have a sense of self and consciousness, but only programming that includes an illusion of self. Those are facts I may have to accept. I have been soundly reminded by my contact with the alien mechanism that I am . . . a fake.”
Riker winced. This was a sample of what Captain Picard must already know. Riker had noticed the captain holding back from comments that might have been bold, rude, or comforting on several occasions, and he’d often wondered about the captain’s choice of silence in those moments. But perhaps Picard had learned the hard way: keep your outbursts in check. A senior officer gets listened to, and everything he says gets remembered. Nothing can be casual, nothing can be emotional without the risk of hurt. It was the price of high rank. And it wasn’t going to go away. When it came right down to it, he didn’t know if Data was alive or not and he shouldn’t have opened his big mouth. He never really thought Data would take his comments so much to heart—but perhaps that was the android in him too.
He saw in Data’s eyes, in his expression, an intense need to define himself and discover his true nature. And here I am, at the heart of his struggle. Part of that struggle may be to admit a truth that isn’t very pleasant.
“I don’t know what you are, I admit that,” he told Data with a vocal shrug. “I’m not qualified to say. But Starfleet checked you out and you tested out alive. That’s good enough for—”
“By machines, sir,” Data reminded painfully. “Machines will report whatever they are told to report. No human looks at me and thinks I am human too. And you, more than anyone, still treat me like a machine.”
Until his chest started hurting, Riker didn’t even inhale. What had he been thinking about, admitting the truth? What happens when it slams you across the face and insists you look?
“Sir,” Data began, solemn again, “if I may go now . . . ”
Sadly Riker leaned on the command chair and nodded.
“Dismissed.”
From behind him—he didn’t watch—he heard the hiss of the turbolift door and the soft sucking noise behind the wall as the lift shot away through the ship. Riker found himself staring at the spot where Data’s boots had left a faint impression on the carpet. Now he breathed deeply, though it gave him no comfort, and listened to the thickness of his own voice.
“The tin man wants a heart.”
“You wanted privacy. You have it. All I ask is that you make good use of it, Counselor.”
Her delicate white hands were trembling, and nothing, nothing would make them stop. She didn’t blame herself for the lack of control—in fact she didn’t even do much to stop it. Burying what she was feeling and experiencing would only do her damage. But the captain was here and he was ready to listen to a confession, a confession that would take a single trouble and multiply it. She had thought having the answers would help her, ease her burden, but no. She knew many more things than she had an hour ago, and nothing was easier. Clarity in this case was more painful than obscurity.
Her head and neck ached as though someone had been sitting on her shoulders and twisting her skull.
“I’ve never experienced anything like this before, Captain,” she said, easing into it. “I’ve had to block thoughts before, but these simply crash through my barriers. These people are so desperate that they’re forcing their way into my mind, no matter how I try to close them off. I don’t understand the science, but there are definitely living, conscious life essences inside the phenomenon. Not memories, not residues, but the actual living essences of individuals. Somehow this thing preserves the consciousness and discards the physical body. And they do have a clear sense of self, Captain.”
“All humans?”
“I’m not sure, sir. I receive impressions of others, but it may be that only the humans can empathize closely enough with me to communicate. But . . . I know who they are now.”
Picard sat behind his glossy black desk and nodded. He tried, tried hard, not to appear impatient, and though there was no fooling her, at least she might appreciate the effort. But there was a definite “I’m waiting” in his posture. “Arkady Reykov and the members of his crew,” he said, quite flatly and with a touch of anticlimax.
Troi blinked. “How did you know?”
Picard flopped his hand on the desktop and casually said, “One needn’t be telepathic.”
She faltered, frowning into the black shine of his desk, and said, “Yes, I suppose it is obvious. But there’s more, sir. Or shall I say, there are more. Many more. Millions more, in fact. Their level of communication is much higher than anything verbal, as though they’ve forgotten over the years how to use simple words and pictures. We may be the first outside contact they’ve had—”
“Since 1995,” she supplied steadily.
“Yes,” she murmured. “For a while, what they wanted was very confusing. There were so many minds shouting at me, some rational, some not . . . only the strongest of those can still maintain a single self-image, but only for limited amounts of time.”
“Like the appearance Riker witnessed in the corridor.”
“I believe so,” she told him, not ready to commit herself to that with a blind yes.
“And now it’s clearer?” Picard prompted. “What they want? You have some idea?”
Troi bent her elegant head, lashes like black whisk brooms dropping to shade her eyes. Then she looked up. “Captain, I haven’t told you everything.”
Jean-Luc Picard leaned forward, his elbows rubbing across the desk’s smooth surface and reflected that she of all people was not one whom he counted on for courteous lies. Courteous silence, perhaps. But deception, no. The first reaction was anger, but that flared and died more quickly than a match in wind. Yet such confessions on a starship could cost lives, and always provoked him.
But something had driven her to this, and Picard’s curiosity was plenty bigger than his ego at this point.
“Then tell me everything now,” he said.
Troi raised her chin as though to walk into the word. “About the confusion. It’s true that there are millions of minds pressing upon me, but there is . . . an absolute unanimity in what they want—”
The door buzzed.
“Yes, who is it?” Picard barked impatiently.
“Riker reporting, Captain.”
Picard started to admit him, but Troi grasped the rim of his desk and pulled forward in her chair. “No, sir, please don’t. Don’t let him in.”
The curiosity burned. “Not even Riker?” Picard said.
“Please, sir . . . ”
He gazed at her for a moment, then spoke aloud to the intercom. “Just a few more minutes, Mr. Riker.”
There was a thunderous pause. Picard could imagine the glances running the main bridge.
“Yes, sir . . . I’ll be out here.”
Picard indulged in a little grunt and muttered, “Sounds a bit wounded, doesn’t he? Now, what’s this all about, Counselor? These people want us to do something for them?”
“You have a decision to make that no single person should have to make. I thought you shouldn’t also have to live with the opinions of the entire crew. That’s why I’m speaking to you privately.”
“I appreciate that, but please—”
“Most religions describe a kind of hell, Captain,” she said carefully. Her shoulders shuddered with the effort. “Now . . . I know what that is.”
“No doubt, but what’s that got to do with these beings?”
Troi’s lovely eyes took on a bitter anger. “I can’t make it clear enough, sir, that these people are still alive. They’re not supernatural. They’re living creatures, many of whom are—or were—human as much as you are human. They have truly achieved immortality. They are still conscious and self-aware.”
“All right,” Picard told her, “I understand that. What do they want?”
She clamped her hands into two tight balls, the skin thinning over her knuckles and turning icy white. “They want you to help them die.”
* * *
“Quit saying that. You’re not a machine. I can tell that by just looking at you.”
Geordi LaForge gave Data a playful push as they entered the dark corridor that led to the warp reserve. It took clearance through three doors, each marked AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY before they were admitted to the especially heavy door marked
RESTRICTED AREA
ANTIMATTER RESERVE CONTAINMENT CENTER
NO ENTRY WITHOUT LEVEL 5 CLEARANCE
The room was very dark, lit only by two tiny pink utility lights on either side. Data’s flashlight cut a clean white path before them. Though the darkness still pressed around them, Geordi could see quite well by that small brightness, and he led the way through stacked storage crates and high-clearance mechanical and computer panels.
“I expected a lot of problems to come my way on space duty,” Geordi said, “but I didn’t expect one of them to be trying to find a definition for life itself.”
“That is indeed the captain’s dilemma now,” Data said, “because of me.”
“It’s not because of you. Cut it out. Boy, after all this trying to act human, you sure found an annoying way to actually do it.”
Data looked up into the darkness, quickly, hopefully. “What am I doing?”
“Pitying yourself, that’s what. Knock it off.”
Since he hadn’t been aware of doing it, Data wasn’t quite sure what to knock off. By the time he found knock it off in his memory banks, the subject had passed and Geordi was leading the way into an anteroom that held most of the computer monitors for the actual antimatter containment. On the dim panels, a few lights and patterns were flicking and flashing away happily in their mechanical ignorance, as if trying to say that all was well, all was as it should be.
“It’s got to be here somewhere,” Geordi muttered. “You try the antimatter injector and I’ll—”
As the doors came together behind them, there was a corresponding clatter on the starboard side of the room that made them both look, just in time to see a dark form duck behind a panel.
“Who’s there?” Geordi demanded.
Data stepped in front of him and sharply ordered, “This is Commander Data. You are in a restricted area. Identify yourself.”
An innocent face peeked up in the corner, suddenly looking very guilty.
“Wesley!” Geordi exclaimed. “What are you doing in here? Come out of there.”
Wesley’s lanky form, still trying to grow into its own long bones, slowly sprouted from behind the panel. His hands gripped the hem of his sweater, a dark and thickly knit sweater that under these circumstances looked like reconnaissance gear. He’d known he was going to be in a cool area of the ship, evidently. “What’re you two doing here?” he echoed. “I mean, it’s sort of the middle of a crisis, isn’t it?”
“Right in the middle,” Geordi said. “The captain’s ordered an energy blackout—”
“I know.”
“And we picked up a power drain in the reserve tank. We’ve got to find it before the creature picks it up.” Through his visor Geordi saw Wesley’s face suddenly erupt with infrared.
“It can’t be much of a drain, can it?” the boy asked. “If you haven’t picked it up before . . . right?”
“That’s right, but it doesn’t make a bit—Wesley, what do you know about this?”
Data approached them and said, “Wesley, if you know about the power drain, you had better tell us. The antimatter from the tank has been emergency-dumped, and we cannot restock from the reserves until we discover the nature of the leak and lock it down.”
Wesley’s young eyes flashed in the dimness. “Well . . . I only . . . I was . . . ”
Geordi fanned his flashlight’s beam angrily. “This area’s off limits, for Christ’s sake, Wes!”
“I know, but that’s just a technicality and it would’ve taken weeks, maybe months, to get the power authorization if I’d gone through channels—”
“Channels exist for a reason. So do rules like off limits. You know what off limits means? What’re you up to?”
“Nothing, really.”
“Report, Ensign,” Data said, cutting through the familiarity and putting juniors where juniors belong.
“It’s really nothing. Someday it might be, though,” Wesley said, intimidation forgotten in enthusiasm. “Just wait. I’m doing an experiment on an idea I had to increase phaser power without pulling any more energy. I’ve got a little mock-up over here—”
He led them to a table that held a shapeless contraption. It looked like so much scrap, except that a light beam was glowing straight through the middle of it.
“What the hell—” Geordi stepped up to the model and pointed at it. “What’s this hooked up to?”
Wesley’s sheepishness returned. “I was . . . tapping the antimatter reserve.”
“Goddamn, Wes! You have an acting rank. Don’t you know that means you could be court-martialed?”
“But it’s never used! They don’t use it once in twenty years! How was I supposed to know they’d need it?”
“You do know this area’s off limits to anyone but authorized personnel,” Data said.
Geordi barely let him finish the sentence. “You start screwing around with the antimatter reserve and get a short or something, and suddenly there’s another sun around! It’s dangerous to tap the reserve directly. Don’t you know that?”
“Oh, come on, Geordi, it’s not that bad,” Wesley complained. “Under normal operation, nobody’d notice. It’d be like plugging in one extra lamp in a hotel. But with all the power shut down—”
“You know better than this.” Geordi shook his head, then said, “Then again, maybe you don’t. How long have you had this thing hooked up to the AR?”
“Well, only about four . . . or five . . . ”
“Days?”
“Weeks.”
“Oh, my God. You gotta be kidding me. What were you trying to do?”
“I didn’t mean any trouble.”
“Well, you’ve got trouble, mister.”
Wesley pulled out a professional whipped-puppy look. “You’d turn me in?”
Geordi looked at the little contraption again and scanned it for invisible leakage. “This is a starship, not a playground, Wes.” The device was working, somehow, doing something, though Geordi couldn’t tell what.
Now what? Report the boy? Wesley was genius material, sure, but not experienced. Had he not been living on a major starship, with all its labs and state-of-the-art technology, where experts in actual applied science, applied engineering, applied mechanics were readily available, some even teaching classes to the kids, he’d be just another smart sixteen-year-old. Living on Earth or such, he’d be bright and showered with opportunities, but not like this. Not to the point of getting his hands on a starship any old day. Geordi knew Wes Crusher had a natural ability to conceptualize the way the universe works, but the only way he could learn to apply it was through all the redundant practice a sixteen-year-old hated even to think about. On the bridge a week ago, Geordi had let Wesley try the helm controls because the boy had so quickly picked up the theories and principles of navigation, only to find that he had plenty of difficulty actually working the controls. Only time, only experience could teach that.
But this—this kind of game-playing was dangerous, and Wesley couldn’t see the danger. Hadn’t had his hands burned yet.
“Shut it down,” Geordi ordered.
“Okay,” Wes mumbled. “That’s what I was doing anyway.”
“Ah—so you knew we’d pick it up. This is wrong and you knew it. What’s the matter?”
“Well . . . ” Wesley hesitated, then said, “I’m not sure how to break the flow without rupturing the magnatomics. Besides, this could never pull enough power to cause a problem. That’s why I went ahead and did it.”
“Wes, even senior engineers don’t tamper with antimatter. Data, look this over. We’ve got to disconnect it.”
The android moved in, and Wesley stepped aside. “What is the principle behind this device?”
Using his hands to illustrate every little twist and turn of his idea, Wesley explained. “Basically, it breaks down the phaser in its initial cycle, into its increment frequencies and energies until the final cycle, when you recombine the phases all at once.”
“What is the problem with it?”
“It . . . doesn’t work.”
“I see.”
“But if it did, this model would have almost four times the power of a hand phaser, and draw from a reaction chamber only half the size of standard.”
“This little toy?” Geordi blurted.
Data looked at Wesley briefly. “Did you remember that with the splitting, you’d have to increase the power by the same magnitude as the split?”
Wesley looked from him to Geordi and back again. “Uh . . . no.”
“Otherwise it would not be strong enough to cycle,” Data postulated. “I’m concerned that the splitting would cause a loss of harmonics in the crystal focusing system. The crystal might break down and result in—”
“Heat. I already know that.”
“Listen, you two,” Geordi said, nudging Wesley even farther back, “Riker’s gonna split our harmonics if we don’t lock down this leak and get back topside. The creature could pop out of innerspace at us any second and I don’t want to be down here when it happens. Wesley, you get out of here, pronto. If the senior engineers find you, you’re going to know the meaning of reprimand.”
“But what about—”
“Data and I can shut it down. I’m going to have it disposed of. You’re on probation. If I hear about any more of these unauthorized experiments of yours, I’m reporting you to the chief engineer.”
Wesley dropped his eyes and grumbled. “Yes, sir.”
“Out. And I mean a straight line out of this area and back to the saucer where you belong.”
The infrared glow increased on Wesley’s cheeks, and without a word he pivoted and strode out.
“Kids,” Geordi said, looking back at the glowing bundle of parts. “Can you unhook it without a backflush?”
“I believe so,” Data told him, carefully picking at the octopus of wires attached to one end of a long rod. “It actually is a remarkable idea. It may not have been tried before.”
“Yeah, Wesley thinks ideas are cheap. He doesn’t understand that implementation isn’t. Everything’s shortcuts when you’re a kid.”
“Is it?”
Geordi paused. “Oh . . . sorry.”
“No cause to apologize, my friend. I may be forced to accept what I am.”
“Now, what is that supposed to mean?”
The android’s slim form glowed within its filmy sheath, and perhaps the glow increased very, very slightly. “I am on a . . . quest.”
“Oh, no—what quest?”
“I must discover my true nature.”
“That’s what I was afraid of. Why do you worry about it so much? Maybe you’re just special. Maybe you don’t have a true nature that you can compare to anything else because there’s never been anything like you. Ever think of that?”
“No, I hadn’t,” Data admitted. He paused, then plucked an inset from part of Wesley’s monster, and the whole thing suddenly shut down with a clean buzz-sigh. The beam of light snapped out an instant later.
Geordi repressed a shiver. “That’s a relief. I get the willies thinking he’s had this hooked up to the reserves all this time.”
“There wouldn’t necessarily have been a rupture,” Data said, “but that’s problematical now.”
“I wouldn’t want to test it, thanks. Let me check the stabilization . . . looks clear now. Concur?”
“I do.”
Geordi tapped his insignia and said, “LaForge to Riker.”
“Riker. What was it?”
“Just a malfunction in the seals.”
“I don’t like the sound of that. Are we clear to restock the main tank?”
“I think so, sir. You might want to have it checked by a containment engineer.”
“We don’t have the time. Counselor Troi insists that entity’s still in the vicinity and even though it doesn’t show up on any of our monitors, I’ve got to assume she’s right. How’s Data?”
Geordi glanced at the android as Data looked up. “He’s . . . fine, sir.”
“All right . . . we’re going to flush the antimatter reserves into the mains right away so we can power up for warp speed if we have to. You stay there and monitor it. Yell if there’s so much as a ripple.”
“Yes, sir. LaForge out.” He shrugged. “I don’t think he hates you as much as you think.”
Data gathered the remains of Wesley’s experiment and stuffed it into a reconditioning chute, piece by piece. “Mr. Riker may be right about me. I have had to accept it.”
“You’re starting again.”
“Perhaps so,” the android said, straightening and facing him. “But it is important for me to discover where I fit into the range of humanness. The question of whether or not the entity is a life-form or what it is to be human—body, spirit, pulse, compassion—all these are things which will show where there is a place for me.” He paced toward Geordi, and finally past him to the big main schematics that showed a faintly lit diagram of the ship’s entire warp engine system, and in a gesture almost gentle, he placed his hand on the lines and lights. “I may be part of the scheme of evolution for the future. Man lives . . . man develops machines, learns to use them, to improve them, to create machines that are smarter and faster than himself, more efficient . . . and he uses those to better himself, even to make them part of himself.” He paused, turned, looked at Geordi’s visor, and knew that even in the faintly lit darkness Geordi could see him with astonishing clarity. “Like you, my friend. You are part of the scheme too. Eventually, perhaps man achieves symbiosis with machines, perhaps even creates life?” He gazed at the board again. “Is that my place? Machines that live?
“And now Captain Picard must decide what to do. Because I know . . . I know that thing means to destroy this ship when it finds us again. It believes that is its purpose. Yet I have received impressions inconsistent with that goal.”
“Like what?”
“Like fear. Am I right? That isn’t consistent.”
Geordi shrugged lamely. “I dunno. It could be. You mean it’s afraid of us?”
“No. It is afraid for us.”
“Sorry, but you’ll have to explain that one. I just see well, remember? I’m no psychologist.”
“The aliens who created it actually knew what life is made of. They knew the moment when consciousness and sense of self begin in a mass of cells. Somehow they encoded the entity with the belief that it must absorb us in order to protect us from this very ship.”
“That’s great,” Geordi grumbled, “just great. Doesn’t it have the brains to know the ship is what’s protecting us from the environment of space?”
“It is a tool, Geordi. A mechanism that decides for itself according to its best judgment.” Data spoke softly, as though entreating him to understand what it could be like to rely only on memory and not on intuition, on programming rather than insight. He paused, and flattened his hand even more intimately on the display board. “It is my greatest fear,” he said, “that I may find I am nothing more than a tool.”
Aching with empathy, Geordi felt the sting of his own helplessness. He could mutter some useless reassurances, but he had no answers. None that would satisfy or comfort Data as there might be comfort for a human being. Data’s relentlessly analytical mind wouldn’t allow him to accept simple answers, and he had stumbled onto a question that defied answers, and would defy them until time ground to a tired halt. Then everything would start up again and the question would resurface, slippery as ever.
“Data . . . ” he said finally, “if it’s any consolation, I don’t think I could be friends with a machine.”
The android’s eyes lost their focus for a moment. The kind words ran through his body, and actually warmed him. Geordi could see the change.
Then Data looked at him askance, and his mouth lengthened into that crooked little grin. “Thank you, Geordi. I will never forget that. No matter what happens.”
Still soft, still sentimental. No slang, no trappings. That was the real Data. Except for the hint of foreknowledge in his tone, which Geordi didn’t digest for several seconds.
Perhaps it was that Data didn’t look away, but that he kept gazing with that curious look, a look that said he had something else cooking in his idea kitchen, and after a moment Geordi took a suspicious step toward him.
“What do you mean, no matter what happens? Hey!”
The deck dropped out from under him. His arms and legs flared out with the initial shock of being lifted, and he realized that he too had committed the crime of forgetting where human ability stopped and android ability took over.
“Data, put me down! What are you—” The room spun, and he was deposited neatly on his feet at the top of a stack of heavy-stress storage units. As he got his balance he noticed the flash of metallic skin as Data plucked the insignia-com from Geordi’s own chest and stepped down from the crates.
Geordi waved his arms and complained, “What’re you doing?”
It took him several seconds to climb down, but that was enough for Data to step back and press the closure circuit for the transparent contamination wall. Two clear wall panels slid out from sockets in the opposite walls and closed in the middle just as Geordi reached them. He was forced to watch helplessly as Data shorted out the lock and fused it. A flare of sparks, and Geordi was trapped.
“Data! What’s this for? Why are you doing this?”
“I’m sorry, Geordi,” the android said, and truly he sounded sorry. “This may be the only time when I am not expected to be on the bridge.”
Geordi’s voice was muffled now behind the clear wall. “I don’t get it. Let me out.”
“I will be taking a shuttlecraft. Please inform the captain and Mr. Riker that I will attempt to get closer to the creature in hopes of communicating more clearly with it.”
Geordi pressed his hands on the transparency. “Data, come on, don’t. Don’t! That’s insane. Come on, open up. Don’t do this. Don’t risk your life.”
“Some would say I have no life to risk.”
“Oh, don’t be a wart! Open the door. How’m I supposed to inform the captain of anything if I’m stuck in here.”
“That is an excellent point. But I must take advantage of the opportunity.” He started to turn away, only to stop, pause, turn back. He gazed at the floor for a moment, then looked up once again at the only person who’d ever treated him completely like a human being.
“Thank you for the past, my friend,” he said, his face astonishingly animate. Now he grinned sentimentally and added, “You’ve been a pal.”