Star Trek: The Next Generation - 116 - The Light Fantastic

by Jeffrey Lang

  “No,” Data replied. “But my daughter has been kidnapped by a hologram who, from what he has told me, cannot leave a single room. He asked me to help him find a means to do so and I thought you might be able to aid me.”

  “Your daughter?” Barclay interjected. “Lal? Lal is alive, too?”

  “Yes,” Data replied. “She was restored by means of . . .” He paused and rubbed his temple. “Again, Reg, we do not have time for this.”

  “Kidnapped?” Barclay interrupted. “That’s terrible.” Addressing the Doctor, he said, “She’s a lovely person, Doctor. We have to do whatever we can to help.” Turning back to Data, he said, “She really was . . . is delightful.”

  “Delightful. Yes, I heard. And another resuscitation. And androids are having children now?”

  “Androids can have children,” Barclay explained. “There are means.”

  The Doctor narrowed his eyes and glared at Barclay. La Forge had the feeling these two had similar kinds of conversations all too frequently. “I hadn’t heard,” he growled.

  Barclay made an expression that looked very much as if he was praying for patience. “Back to the point,” he said. “Unfortunately, no, we haven’t been able to reproduce the emitter technology. Albert explained a little about what you wanted to know—though he omitted the information about Lal!—and told me what he already told you. Nothing has changed: The emitter defies our ability to scan it, and any attempt to disassemble it would destroy it.”

  “And, besides,” the Doctor said, cupping his arm protectively, “it’s mine. Legally. Not property of Starfleet. Captain Braxton gave it to me.”

  “I am aware of the ruling, Doctor,” Data said. He leaned back in the chair. “Then, in the time we have left, may I ask your advice? Having been in a similar situation, can you predict how Moriarty may react when he finds out I cannot give him what he wants?”

  “Moriarty?” Barclay asked. “You mean, the Moriarty? He’s back?”

  “Yes,” Data said. “I had assumed Albert told you. He is the one who kidnapped Lal.”

  “Moriarty?” the Doctor asked. “You mean Professor James Moriarty? From Sherlock Holmes?”

  “A holographic entity whose existence sprang from the Sherlock Holmes stories, yes. But we have to assume he is a completely different individual now. More complex.”

  “I’ve heard of him,” the Doctor said. “Ours is a very small community, Mister Data. And given what happened to him, I think you’ll have to assume . . .”

  “That he is very angry,” Data said. “Yes, I know.”

  The Doctor waved his hand dismissively. “Angry, of course. Obviously. Who wouldn’t be? But no, something else . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “Frightened. Very frightened. And, one would have to assume, desperate.” The Doctor leaned toward the viewer, his face looming large. “Believe me, Mister Data, I know something about that.”

  “As do I, Doctor. As do I.”

  And then the screen went blank.

  La Forge was startled. “I didn’t think our time was up.”

  “It wasn’t,” Shakti said. “I think Lieutenant Barclay’s friend has an elevated sense of the dramatic. He cut the signal.”

  “I agree,” Data said. “We are running out of options.”

  “Then maybe I can help,” said a voice from the screen. It flickered to life again. Albert Lee’s face loomed.

  “Albert,” Data said. “Thank you for your assistance in locating Mister Barclay. I had not realized you were listening in.”

  “I did,” Shakti inserted softly.

  “I thought I might be able to help,” Albert said.

  “I assume you were able to wrest yourself away from the security officers.”

  Albert frowned. “There’s something to be said for having a reputation for being old and crotchety. Also, for being found unconscious on the floor.” He reached up and rubbed his neck where Data had administered the nerve pinch. “Thanks for this, by the way. Best nap I’ve had in ten years.”

  “You are welcome,” Data deadpanned. “Were you permitted to return to work?”

  “I was, but only because most of what I do isn’t terribly sensitive. And a good thing, too, because I had another idea. Something that might help you get out of this jam.”

  “Please relate your idea.”

  “The remote-control device—the one they used to assassinate the President . . .”

  “Go on.”

  “Could it be retrofitted so that Moriarty could upload his consciousness into an android? It’s not exactly what he wants, but at least he’d have a body some of the time.”

  Data considered the idea. “An interesting concept, Albert. If Professor Moriarty had a physical body, that could be an option I would be willing to explore.”

  “Damn,” Albert muttered. “Well, if you change your mind and want to take a closer look at the transmitter, it’s here at the Daystrom.”

  “Thank you,” Data said. “But your idea has sparked another. Shakti, please search the archives for information about Roger Korby and the androids of Exo III.”

  “Searching,” Shakti said. “Retrieved. What would you like to know?”

  “The device that allowed Korby to transfer his consciousness into android bodies: What happened to it?”

  “Starfleet records say the device was removed from Exo III and taken to a research facility. Several years of study revealed that the device was useless without the templates.”

  “What happened to it?” La Forge asked.

  “The device was stored in a Starfleet facility. The warehouse—it was basically a warehouse—was destroyed during the Borg invasion of 2381. No record of whether the device was recovered or demolished. Most of the other material stored there was pulverized, but you know Starfleet: They like their recordkeeping. Searching . . . Hmmm . . . Then the area was cleaned up and the scrap was sold to a private citizen.”

  “Who?” Data asked.

  “The identity of the buyer is protected. Lots of security here. Hang on a moment. Let me get my big crowbar . . .” A moment later, the simulated sound of metal tearing up metal rang from the speakers.

  “Apparently, the Doctor isn’t the only one with a flair for the dramatic,” La Forge observed. “And, just so we’re clear about this, she’s breaking into a secured Starfleet database.”

  “She is not breaking into anything,” Shakti said. “She’s gently prompting it to give up the goods. And she has. His name is Mudd.”

  “Excuse me?” Data said.

  “The buyer: His name is Harcourt Fenton Mudd. Or was. Based on the records I’ve found, Harry Mudd is . . . or was . . . very, very old.”

  “And buying scrap,” Data observed. “The plot thickens.”

  15

  Aboard the Archeus

  Albert Lee said, “I’m guessing that you know this Harry Mudd.”

  “Not personally,” Data replied. “By reputation, yes. Alice, Lal’s governess, and Mudd were acquainted, though I suspect ‘acquainted’ might be an understatement.”

  “During 2268,” Shakti recited, “or Stardate 4513.3 if you want to get fussy about it, the Enterprise, under the command of James Kirk, was sabotaged by an artificial humanoid—an android—named Norman. The ship’s engines were rigged to explode if he wasn’t permitted to pilot the Enterprise to an undisclosed location. Norman scrambled the navigation console, so they weren’t certain where they were headed. In an uncharacteristically compliant moment, Kirk permitted Norman to do this. I strongly suspect the captain correctly ascertained that Norman was only a pawn in a larger game and wanted to discover who the true mastermind was.”

  Albert settled back into his chair. He had not been formally introduced to the persona behind the disembodied Shakti, but he liked her voice and her style. If he had only thought to make a cup of coffee, the moment would be perfection.

  “As it turned out, the mastermind was none other than Harcourt Fenton Mudd, a con man and trickster of so
me minor renown, whom the Enterprise crew had encountered on at least one previous occasion. Kirk was notorious for leaving mission details out of his logs when he didn’t think they were relevant, so his exact dealings with Mudd are difficult to determine.” An image of a portly middle-aged man whom Albert assumed was Mudd appeared on his monitor. Given the man’s rumpled and unhappy appearance, Albert had to assume this was a mug shot, a portrait taken shortly after being apprehended for a crime. Against his will, Albert felt pity for the man, probably the result of his pouting lower lip and general “Who, me?” demeanor.

  “Through a series of misadventures, Mudd had been stranded on the androids’ planet, where they quickly named him ‘emperor’ (Albert heard the quotation marks in Shakti’s voice) and allowed Mudd to pretty much run the planet, committing whatever tawdry acts he could imagine. Fortunately for everyone, Mudd’s imagination seemed fairly limited, and he spent most of his time designing ever-more-curvaceous lines of female androids who allowed him to believe they would obey his every whim.” Images of well-coiffed, underdressed young ladies flickered past, ending with a photo of a lovely brunette woman wearing a filmy orange dress. To Albert, she appeared both chilly and embarrassed. “This last is one of the Alice series, reportedly one of Mudd’s favorites. Apparently, he made a lot of them.

  “As Captain Kirk and the crew quickly learned, Mudd was emperor in name only. In fact, the androids had been studying him in an attempt to learn more about humanity. They found Mudd deeply flawed—a polite way of saying they thought he was a loser—but needed his help in securing a means to procure less-flawed individuals—the crew of the Enterprise, in case you were wondering—in exchange for permission to leave the planet.”

  “Why would he want to leave the planet?” Albert asked. “Sounds like a pretty nice setup.”

  “Who knows?” Shakti said. “Psych profiles of Harry Mudd indicate he was a narcissist. Perhaps the idea of proscribing how much of him the universe had to enjoy bothered him. Perhaps he was bored. As someone or another observed at one time or another, having is not so pleasing a thing after all as wanting. Mudd may have discovered being waited on hand and foot isn’t nearly as much fun as it sounds.”

  “I’m willing to give it a try,” Albert said.

  “In the end, Kirk and company were able to overcome their captors by tormenting the poor creatures with illogical behavior . . .”

  “That old chestnut?” Albert exclaimed. “Does that even really work?”

  “It was the twenty-third century,” Shakti said, sighing, “and they weren’t the brightest androids that ever came off the assembly line. No wonder their whole species died out. In any case, Kirk reprogrammed—I mean, introduced—the idea of freedom and decency and asked Norman and company to hang on to Harry Mudd until he became a better human being.”

  “Shaky grasp of psychology,” Albert observed. “Sounds like Kirk just didn’t want to deal with Mudd.”

  “Indeed.”

  “But this was all over one hundred and twenty years ago,” La Forge inserted. Shakti changed the monitor display so that Lee saw only the interior of the Archeus. “Unless he got ahold of a time machine, Mudd must be ancient.”

  “In the late twenty-two nineties, Mudd began to invest heavily in companies that produced life-extending technologies. He had, contrary to all expectation, amassed quite a sizable fortune, the kind of wealth that self-perpetuates unless handled very badly,” Shakti said. “He sank a considerable portion of his fortune into these technologies, presumably because he couldn’t imagine a universe without Harry Mudd in it. If he was extremely careful and extremely lucky, he could have lived to the present day, especially if he used cryogenic technology to preserve himself for long periods.”

  “Why would he do that?” La Forge asked. “What’s the point of being alive if you’re in cryo-storage?”

  “Perhaps he was waiting for something,” Albert said. “Or someone.”

  “Good guess,” Shakti said in a tone that made Lee smile. “I like you, Albert. You’re quick.” Off to the edge of the screen, Lee watched La Forge groan and cup his face with his palms. “My research shows Mudd hired private detectives and research specialists over the course of several decades. Clearly, he was looking for someone.”

  “Alice,” Data said. “He was searching for Alice.”

  “But why?” Albert asked.

  “Unknown,” Data stated. “But we can make suppositions: Alice must know something or possess something that Mudd desperately wants. If he can find her, he can acquire this object or knowledge.”

  “You’ll forgive me for being judgmental,” Shakti said, “but as one artificial intelligence observing another, Alice never struck me as the sort who possesses specialized knowledge about anything more sophisticated than hair-care technology.”

  Albert’s ears perked up. Shakti was an A.I. How interesting.

  “No,” Data agreed. “But she might know something about someone who does. Shakti, do you possess the coordinates for Alice’s homeworld?”

  “Ah—I was wondering when we’d get to that. In fact, I don’t. No one does. Even the Enterprise’s logs don’t have that information. It’s as if someone went back through every record in existence and made sure the information was erased. Again, as one artificial intelligence to another, nice job, someone.”

  “Who could do something like that?” La Forge asked. “Could Alice’s people have arranged it? If so, why?”

  “It seems unlikely,” Data said. “Also, I should mention that when I was aboard Akharin’s space station, shortly before it was destroyed, he had a room—a kind of miniature museum of artificial intelligences. There was a humanoid male who had a necklace imprinted with the number one. He was inert—lifeless—but the display had a label: It said ‘Norman.’ Could this be the same Norman you mentioned in your story?”

  “Possibly,” Shakti said, “though if it was, that’s bad. Norman was supposedly the central processor, the traffic cop. If he was destroyed or rendered inert, then something unfortunate might have happened to the androids.”

  “Or there could have been a change in leadership,” La Forge said. “Or maybe Norman went out again looking for another starship and ran into trouble. Or maybe there was more than one Norman after all. I guess we’ll never know. But that still doesn’t explain how the coordinates of the planet were erased from Starfleet records.”

  “The Fellowship,” Data said. “They have the resources and the motivation.”

  “I agree,” Shakti said. “This story has their non-sebaceous fingerprints all over it.”

  “So there’s no way to find the androids’ planet,” La Forge said. “But so what? We want Mudd, not the androids.”

  “Oh, I already found him,” Shakti said. “That was easy. He hasn’t exactly made himself scarce. Remember? Narcissist?”

  “Why didn’t you say so?” La Forge said.

  “Indeed,” Data said. “And why are we not on our way to wherever he is?”

  “We are,” Shakti said. “I’m just now getting clearance from Ops. It’s like you guys think I’m not on top of these details. I just had to make sure you were up to speed.”

  “I never doubted you for a moment, Shakti,” Lee said, enjoying the moment.

  “You are incredibly cute, sir,” Shakti said. “I’m going to come visit you when this is all over.”

  La Forge groaned again. “Can we please go into warp?”

  “I don’t think he gives you enough respect, Albert,” Shakti declared. “I think he’s envious.”

  A placeless place

  “List for me the last ten words you’ve said where the second syllable began with the letter B,” the Countess said.

  Lal cocked her head to the side and recited, “Sequentially or alphabetically?”

  “You choose.”

  “All right: Albeit, embarrass, embody, embolden—I went on a bit of an ‘em’ streak, didn’t I?—fable, garbled, label, rambunctious, robot, and well-being, t
hough I admit that last one is a bit of a stretch. Why do you ask?”

  “It’s a little game my girls and I used to play. It was one of the ways I monitored them.”

  “What a wonderful mother you are,” Lal said as sincerely as she could (and careful to use the present tense). “And what a strange universe you came from that had such creatures in it.”

  The Countess dipped her head in a mock-bow.

  “So, if I may ask,” Lal asked, “what do you think of this universe?” The Countess (Lal preferred to think of her as “the Countess”) had brought her a cup of tea, which she had enjoyed greatly, though more for the ceremony of its preparation and presentation than for its flavor or effect on her physiology. Though, Lal allowed, she did feel, to a degree, “bucked up.” The Countess seemed greatly pleased to hear this.

  “I’m sorry, my dear. I don’t understand the question,” the Countess replied, poking at the fire with an ornate metal rod. At some point while the tea had been steeping, a fireplace had unfolded from the far wall, providing a merry light as well as the pleasant aroma of wood turning into charcoal. Lal resolved to have a fireplace installed into her sitting room back home when she returned to Orion.

  “This universe—the universe I inhabit—how does it compare to the one you inhabited before, the one that collapsed?”

  “Ah, I understand,” the Countess replied, sliding shut the glass door that prevented sparks from singeing the carpet. “Your supposition is that there are some fundamental, noticeable differences between this universe—the ‘real’ universe —and the ‘fictional’ one inside the memory solid. Is that correct?”

  “Yes,” Lal said, “though I confess having it stated in that fashion makes me feel like I’ve been very rude. Have I?”

  The Countess glanced at her, eyebrows raised. The firelight reflected off her white flesh, making her cheeks appear to glow pinkly. “A bit, dear girl. But only a bit. Your only offense is candor, which is a trait of the very young. The truly terrible habits—mendaciousness and insincerity—shall only come with age.”