Star Trek: The Next Generation - 114 - Cold Equations: The Body Electric

by David Mack

  “Why does it have to be Data?”

  The human scrunched his brow. “Excuse me?”

  “You heard me. What’s so special about him? Why do you need him?”

  While the human pondered an answer, Tyros’s voice cut through Gatt’s thoughts.

  Be quiet, Tyros. I know what I’m doing.

 

  Wesley shrugged. “I guess it doesn’t have to be him. But since every life and civilization in the galaxy depends on the outcome, I think my friends and I would prefer to have someone we trust speak on our behalf. In this case that would be Data—though if you were willing to lend me the services of Rhea McAdams, I think we could—”

  “She’s not going anywhere. Don’t mention her again.”

  The human lifted his hands, a gesture of capitulation. “Forget I asked.” Relaxing again, he continued. “Look, I might as well level with you. It’s not like I can just pop in, grab Data, and pop out. I can move myself like that through space-time, but I can’t carry passengers. The only way I can get Data to the center of the galaxy in time is to use my powers to shift a warp-capable starship from here to there. Now, I’d hoped we might strike some kind of deal, where I promise to help you get something you want, and in exchange, you let me leave with Data. But it seems that’s not a solution that works for all of us.”

  Data cut in, “I will not leave without Akharin.”

  Akharin added, “I won’t leave without Rhea.”

  “In that case,” Wesley said, “why don’t we all go?”

  “Where?” Gatt asked. “The center of the galaxy?”

  “Exactly. I can show you the Machine, and you can try to recruit it into your little AI-only club.” Another devil-may-care shrug. “Yeah, my friends told me about that, too. Anyway, I can do this, but before I do, I need you to promise that if we let you talk to the Machine, you’ll do your best to get it to stop what it’s doing and leave our galaxy alone.”

  “We’ll agree to your terms if you’ll agree to ours.”

  Crossed arms signaled the Traveler’s skepticism. “And those would be?”

  “You are not allowed to try to remove Data, Akharin, or Rhea from this ship, either by force or by subterfuge. Their captivity is an internal matter of the Fellowship, and we will not tolerate meddling by outsiders. Abide by this demand, and we will intercede for you with this machine. Otherwise, we’ll revoke our help and leave you and the other biological forms of this galaxy to meet your fate.” He studied the human, looking for any sign of deception. “Are we agreed?”

  “Sounds good. I just need your permission to guide your ship.” There was no change in Wesley’s vital metrics.

  Gatt gestured for Wesley to join him. “Then let’s be on our way.”

  The human fell in with Gatt and his retinue, his manner fearless. Perhaps he knew more than he was saying; perhaps he was simply naïve. Whichever proved to be true, Gatt would deal with him soon enough. Then came Tyros’s nagging inside his mind.

 

  Of course it is, Gatt answered. For him.

  * * *

  Being the center of attention brought with it an almost physically palpable sensation of pressure for Wesley Crusher. He knew that Gatt and the other cybernetic denizens of Altanexa—not to mention the sentient ship itself—were watching his every movement with critical eyes. So far he had controlled his body’s involuntary responses, thanks to the mental conditioning that came with exercising his talents as a Traveler, but he felt their suspicion weighing upon him as he was escorted into the vessel’s “nerve center,” where more unfamiliar faces awaited him.

  He looked around the compartment and found himself at a loss to identify the functions of the few consoles he saw there. Confused, he wondered aloud, “Where’s the helm?”

  “Altanexa doesn’t have one,” replied a lanky crew member with upswept almond-shaped eyes. “Most of her onboard interfaces are configured on an as-needed basis, and she prefers to do most of her own navigation and flight control.”

  Gatt presented Wesley to the answer-man. “This is Tyros, my second-in-command.”

  “A pleasure.” He offered Tyros his hand, and the android shook it. Well, he’s friendlier than his boss, at least. “Anything else I should know before we get started?”

  Tyros led him to an unmanned console. “You can make contact with Altanexa from here.” Uncertainty clouded his features. “Can you explain what you’re about to do?”

  “I can try. First, I’ll adjust her warp drive’s matter-antimatter intermix formulas. Then I’ll plot a course, and we’ll jump to warp one. After we reach light speed, I’ll take manual control of our acceleration and navigation—assuming your ship will let me. The next part’s a bit hard to put into words. I’ll project my abilities for slipping through space-time into the ship’s propulsion system and take us into hyperwarp. Your instruments will probably say we’ve never exceeded warp one, but if all goes well, I can bring us to the center of the galaxy in a matter of moments.”

  His description appeared to make an impression upon Tyros. “Impressive. Are there any risks to Altanexa or the crew that I need to be aware of?”

  “Not unless something happens to me while we’re at hyperwarp.”

  A sly smile. “Is that a threat?”

  “More like a cautionary note.” He settled in at the wraparound control panel. As soon as he touched its surface, it lit up and began arranging itself into an ergonomic interface that gave him easy access to all the systems he needed: fuel intermix, warp drive, navigation, and sensors. “Nice. Altanexa, could I ask you to translate this panel into Federation Standard?” As soon as he’d asked, the alien symbols on the controls’ labels switched to English with Arabic numerals. “Fantastic, thank you.” Not wanting to test the patience of his hosts—he resisted thinking of them as captors, now that they had an arrangement—he worked quickly, making his changes.

  Gatt stepped forward and loomed over him. “How much longer will this take?”

  “Just a few more seconds. Luckily, Altanexa’s propulsion and navigation systems are far better integrated than those on Starfleet vessels.”

  “Yes, we know,” Gatt said with naked disdain. He searched Wesley’s face for a reaction. With passive-aggressive insincerity, he asked, “Did I offend you?”

  Wesley shot a contemptuous glare at him. “I’m not in Starfleet. What do I care?” Then he returned to his preparations before Gatt could draw him any further into a debate. “There, that ought to about do it. Altanexa, please confirm that you’re ready to increase power output to one hundred seven percent of your specifications’ rated maximums.”

  A brief message appeared on his console: ALL SYSTEMS READY.

  “Fantastic,” he said. “Hold on to something heavy, folks. This is gonna be a wild ride.”

  He entered the final set of coordinates and nudged the ship to light speed. A holographic display of the ship’s forward-angle view snapped from a static starfield to a vista of brilliant ribbons stretching past as if they were flowing over the surface of an invisible tunnel in space. “Warp one,” Wesley declared. “Beginning hyperwarp acceleration . . . now.”

  The droning of the engines escalated in pitch as Wesley pressed his palms against the console and concentrated on expressing his will through the ship’s warp coils. Their tremendous reserves of power became extensions of his consciousness, and as he visualized himself in two places at once—in both Altanexa’s current position and in the one to which he desired it be moved—he felt himself alternating between them.

  This was the most taxing and vulnerable moment for a Traveler: bivalence. Wesley was in both places at once, yet wholly in neither. To the crew of Altanexa, he would seem to flicker in and out of corporeality. To an observer at his destination, his coming would be heralded by inexplicable fluctuations in the subspatial membrane. In such moments, he was alive
and dead, whole and dispersed, a wave function both collapsed and continuing. He was . . . and was not.

  On the holoscreen, the light of the galaxy blazed past, a muddy sea of color, a suggestion of motion for a vessel that was itself not moving but rather shifting the fabric of the universe around it, bringing its destination to it instead of forcing itself across the vast wasteland of space.

  Factors collapsed to zero, and in that moment he knew he had carried Altanexa and her crew across the emptiness of possibility and back into the embrace of the actual.

  Then a horrific jolt of raw energy coursed through him, purpling his vision. His jaw seized, forcing his molars into the side of his tongue. Coppery-tasting warmth filled his mouth, and his head swam. His hands came away from the console as vertigo pulled him from his seat. The deck rose to meet him, and he felt its cold, brutal kiss as he face-planted into the metal. Lying in a crumpled heap, bloody spittle pouring from his mouth and puddling in front of him, he saw the world sideways through a hazy filter of shocked anesthesia.

  Blurry figures—he could only assume they were Gatt and Tyros—towered over him, and their voices sounded muffled, as if they came through layers of cotton a hundred meters underwater.

  “Nexa’s timing was perfect,” said Gatt.

  Tyros nudged Wesley with his foot. “Looks like she set the shock level just about right. He’s stunned, but not dead.”

  “Good, we’ll need him.” The big one looked away. “Is that the Enterprise?”

  “Yes,” said a disembodied feminine voice from the overhead.

  “Excellent.” Gatt drew his sidearm and pointed it at Wesley. “Hail them and let them know we have a medical emergency for them to deal with.”

  A flash of light and a screech pushed Wesley over the edge, into a realm of shadow beyond measure and a place beyond pain.

  17

  It never ceased to amaze Gatt how easy it was to lie to organic life-forms. How could species so gullible have survived long enough to invent anything as transcendent as artificial intelligence?

  The transporter beam of the Enterprise faded, giving Gatt a clear view of the transporter room and its occupants. The human commanding officer was flanked by his male Klingon first officer and a human woman in a blue surgeon’s coat. Behind the three of them, manning the control panel, was a Bolian man in an engineering uniform and, beside him, a Bajoran woman whom Gatt would have pegged as a security officer because of the combat rifle in her hands even if he hadn’t noticed the mustard hue of her shirt collar. Off to one side of the small compartment, near the door, two personnel whose uniforms were trimmed in blue waited with what Gatt surmised were portable medical kits and an antigrav stretcher. They all stared at Gatt, who stood on the transporter platform with the unconscious Wesley Crusher cradled in his arms.

  “He needs help,” Gatt said, feigning tender concern.

  The doctor waved her people forward and joined them at the edge of the transporter platform. As the two junior personnel took Wesley from Gatt’s arms and lowered him onto the antigrav stretcher, the chief medical officer scanned the unconscious Traveler with her tricorder. “He’s suffered a neurological trauma consistent with an electrical shock.” She skewered Gatt with an icy glare that betrayed deep personal animosity. “What the hell happened to him?”

  “We aren’t sure,” Gatt lied. “He was guiding our ship here through hyperwarp, but no one told him our vessel is sentient. I think she resisted him when he started using his abilities to accelerate us beyond normal warp flight. One minute everything was fine, and then things started going wrong. Nexa was fighting him, but he refused to break contact—he said we’d be lost in some parallel dimension if he didn’t guide us back. But as soon as we returned to normal space, he collapsed, and our ship’s warp drive went off line.” He mimicked a gaze of warm regard and admiration for the stunned Traveler. “We might’ve all been lost. He saved us.”

  The commander stepped forward. “Welcome aboard the Enterprise. I’m Captain Jean-Luc Picard. This is my first officer, Commander Worf, and our chief medical officer, Doctor Beverly Crusher. To whom am I speaking?”

  “Gatt, first among equals on Altanexa, speaking on behalf of the Fellowship of Artificial Intelligence.” It was more than exaggeration for Gatt to present himself as someone who spoke for the Fellowship. No one actually held such a privilege, but he presumed the Starfleeters wouldn’t know that. In fact, he and his companions on Altanexa, including the ship itself, were barely members of the Fellowship at all. Castigated and censured by their fellow AIs more times than he cared to recall, they were, at best, a radical splinter faction, a band of denigrated outcasts.

  His ruse seemed to work, however. None of the Enterprise officers exhibited any increase in tension levels or other involuntary stress responses in reaction to his cover story. The doctor’s stress levels were elevated as she escorted Wesley and the medics out of the transporter room, but Gatt attributed her distress to the fact that she shared a patriarchal surname with the stricken Traveler. A relative, no doubt. I calculate a 99.8 percent probability she is his mother.

  Picard asked, “Did Wesley explain why he brought you here?”

  “He said you need the help of AIs such as us to speak to a planet-sized sentient machine that’s threatening the galaxy. Does that about sum it up?”

  The captain gave a slight nod. “In general, yes. Though it’s a bit more complicated than that. I’m afraid we don’t have much time left to disrupt its mission.”

  “Yes, your friend warned us of the scope of the threat. Extermination of all organic life in the galaxy over the next fifty millennia, coupled with the immediate loss of subspace.”

  Worf eyed Gatt like a predator sizing up a meal. “Did he also inform you that his purpose was to return with our friend, Data?”

  “He did,” Gatt said. “As it happens, he found us, instead.”

  Shifts in brainwaves and body temperatures signaled an increase in suspicion by Picard and Worf. The captain narrowed his eyes and advanced on Gatt, apparently not at all intimidated by the android’s greater size and mass. His tone was fearless. “Where is Mister Data?”

  “Elsewhere,” Gatt said. “Engaged in delicate research that can’t be interrupted.”

  “Let us speak to him,” Worf insisted.

  Gatt shook his head. “As I said—his work can’t be interrupted right now. It’s at a very delicate stage, and I promised him complete seclusion.”

  The biometric data being gathered by Gatt’s sensors only confirmed what he could already see in Worf’s and Picard’s faces: their suspicions were deepening, and his mendacities were only making the situation worse. There was no point in spinning further fabrications. He let out a raspy chuckle as he surrendered to the death of his deception. “You know, don’t you?”

  Picard was unyielding. “That Data is aboard your vessel as a prisoner? Yes.”

  “Then you should also know that he came to us of his own free will, because he wanted something from us—something we aren’t willing to give him.”

  The Klingon’s blood pressure was climbing. “Then release him to us.”

  “I wish we could. He won’t go unless he gets what he wants—and that won’t happen.” He put on a humorless smile. “But that’s no reason we can’t reach an accord of our own. You need our help to stop this machine from causing a galactic holocaust, and we’re willing to help you—provided you answer one simple question: What’s in it for us?”

  Disgust turned Picard’s features ugly. “You would barter the fate of the galaxy?”

  “Let me be frank, Captain. I know you probably object to us holding your friend Data as a prisoner, and that if you have a chance, you’ll interfere in what I assure you is an internal matter of the Fellowship. But if you’re willing to put aside such short-sighted goals and focus on the big picture, we might be able to help each other.”

  Disgruntled looks passed between Picard and Worf. Then the captain asked, “What will it take to
persuade you to intercede for us with the Machine?”

  “Good question,” Gatt said. “Let’s go someplace more civilized and talk it over.”

  * * *

  Negotiating with Gatt while permitting him to hold Data as a prisoner rankled Picard, but he had to assume that Data could take care of himself—and, at the moment, the fate of the galaxy took precedence over matters of personal loyalty. With Worf standing behind him, he faced Gatt across the desk in his ready room. The horror-faced android was pensive as he considered all that Picard had explained about their communications impasse with the Machine.

  “So,” Gatt said at last, “the Machine doesn’t consider organic beings to be ‘true life-forms.’ I think you’d have to admit, given the history of organic-synthetic relations in this galaxy, that this is a highly ironic predicament you find yourselves in.”

  “Ironic is not the word I would choose,” Picard said.

  The android seemed to enjoy highlighting their disadvantage. “Perhaps you’d prefer the phrase ‘poetic justice.’ ”

  “There is nothing just in the Machine’s actions,” Worf said.

  “If you say so. But let’s put that aside. What do you know of its motives?”

  “Nothing,” Picard admitted. “It’s allowed us to see what it’s doing, but nothing more. We don’t know why it’s targeted our galaxy, or whether its actions are preventative or punitive, or something else entirely. If there was some way to engage it in a dialogue, and understand why this is happening, perhaps we could reason with it, or strike a bargain. But without that channel of communication, I fear there is little chance of a peaceful resolution.”

  Gatt nodded. “I see.” His eyes moved from Picard to Worf and back again. “My second-in-command and I will pay a visit to the Machine. I can’t promise we’ll have any better luck than you did, but we’ll do what we can.”

  “Thank you,” Picard said.