DESCENT

by Diane Carey

JEAN-LUC PICARD cast a glance at the Borg guard outside the forcefield, then moved to the back of the cell and pretended to fall asleep on the bench. He gestured to Troi.

  She nodded.

  He turned his head away and listened.

  She was moving toward the forcefield.

  “May I ask you something?”

  Her voice was quiet, unintimidating. Picard listened to it, and hoped the Borg guard was listening too.

  “What happened to the people who lived on this planet?” Troi went on, apparently realizing that she had to provide specifics in order to get specifics in return.

  “They were biological life-forms,” the guard buzzed back, his voice rattling with that robotic Borg sound. “They were weak and imperfect. The One ordered us to destroy them.”

  Picard listened, his hands and legs tense as he lay there and hoped Troi would pursue the conversation. He stared at the gray wall.

  “Do you know where the One came from?” Troi asked.

  Another pause. The guard didn’t have an answer.

  “Think about it,” Troi pushed on. “The One wasn’t born like you and me. Someone constructed him.”

  “His builder must have been very wise.”

  “His builder,” Troi parried, “was a biological life-form.”

  Instantly the Borg responded. “That is not possible.”

  “Why do you think he was made to look human?” Troi said, going on to the next logical step.

  Picard held back a desire to applaud her persistence. All he could do was stay out of the way and make sure the Borg guard felt confident enough to converse with her.

  The Borg guard was silent. Did that mean he was disturbed?

  Picard gave in to his drumming curiosity and turned just enough to see what was happening.

  The guard was almost facing the cell, but was staring past the entrance, obviously deep in thought.

  “He was created by an imperfect organism,” Troi continued, remaining elegantly cool. “Therefore he is not perfect.”

  “He is the One,” the Borg said.

  “Since he’s not perfect,” the counselor went on in perfect agreement with herself, “then the Borg don’t have to do what he says. Do they?”

  She asked it in a manner that required no answer.

  But Picard was heartened even without that answer. He was seeing something he had thought was out of reach. In spite of their behavior and appearance, the Borg weren’t robots. They never were, even before Hugh brought them individuality and Lore perverted that.

  As he watched the guard, Picard saw the quivering doubts, the beautiful dilemma, and the moving desires cluttering the guard’s face. Where there was doubt, there was hope. The new Borg thought they were doing the right thing. They wanted to do what was right, wanted to perceive right and execute rightness, and they were seeking now the definition of that.

  This was the flicker of life that he could use if he moved wisely. Before him, in the eyes of the confused Borg guard, was glinting the demand for the birthright that all intelligent beings shared. The natural right to accept personal merit where due, to stumble for oneself, to avoid—yes, passionately avoid—becoming static and indistinguishable from one another. The right to have opinions that differed and to wrangle over those differences. Picard knew that he, the prisoner, was witness to a turbulent upheaval and breaking forth of true individual intelligence. In time, every Borg could become a hotspur.

  If only that happens soon enough for the Federation and, if possible, for us.

  Approaching footsteps shattered Picard’s thoughts and shocked the Borg guard back to his sentry duty.

  Picard came out from his corner just as Lore appeared outside the field.

  “Where is Geordi?” Picard asked, keeping control over the demanding note that wanted out. “What have you done with him?”

  Lore ignored him and activated the outer control panel of the forcefield. The field shivered, sizzled, and resituated itself to bisect the cell and separate Picard and Troi.

  Damn it, Picard thought. I should have anticipated that and kept her behind me. Once again I’ve failed to predict his actions and now—

  “Hello, Deanna.”

  Troi backed away from Lore, but not more than a step or two. She didn’t seem afraid. At least not yet.

  Picard watched her face, her large black eyes, her beauty, which was now a curse, and saw her muster the training she had been given by Starfleet and the hardened wisdom she had earned by going through life as a lovely woman.

  “How beautiful you are,” Lore said, as though he had heard Picard’s thoughts.

  Feeling violated himself, Picard pushed forward toward the hot invisible field. “Leave her alone.”

  Lore ignored him. He pressed forward toward Troi. “There’s no need to pretend. I’ve seen the way you look at me. Everyone has.”

  “You’re mistaken, Lore,” the counselor said, her voice firm and emotionless.

  She backed away again, trying to maintain a certain space between them. Too much would give her fears away. Too little would invite him on.

  On the other hand, they all knew that Lore would do what he wanted, no matter how Troi played the ugly game, so there was no avoiding him.

  “I don’t think I’m mistaken,” Lore said, his eerie grin plastered across what might as well have been the familiar face of Data, who for so long had been worthy of their trust. “Don’t be afraid. I’m not going to hurt you.”

  Picard pushed against the forcefield, but it pushed back with skittering burns on his skin and his uniform. It would come into his mouth and down his throat if he got any closer.

  “Leave her alone,” he said again, more forcefully.

  Lore glanced at him. “Jealous, Captain? She’s mine now, and there’s nothing you can do to stop me.”

  Anger puckered Troi’s ivory face. “No matter what you do to me, I do not belong to you.”

  Lore spun to face her again, his expression suddenly embittered as he was forced to accept the difference between conquest of the body and conquest of the heart. “You don’t seem to realize what a privilege I’m bestowing on you.”

  “I don’t care,” Troi said. “You’re not sacred to those of us who can think for ourselves.”

  She was winning, and Lore looked as though he would kill her for that.

  He reached for her, and Troi lashed out at his face with both fists.

  As Lore blinked away the blows, Troi moved toward the wall. Another smile crossed the android’s bright face, but it wasn’t much of a smile. “I like that,” he said. “How did you know?”

  “Liar,” Troi countered. “You can’t fool me, and you can’t have me. I know more about emotion than you do, and I’ll always win against you.”

  Picard wanted to tell her to stop, but she was right. She did know more than Lore did, and maybe more than the captain did, about raw emotions and how to use them—for good or ill. He realized that any member of his crew might face a moment like this, when he couldn’t help them, but for him to be witness to it . . . He wanted to put his hand through this damnable field and peel the artificial skin off that creature.

  Lore glared at Deanna. Then he turned to the cell opening and looked at the Borg guard, who was watching like a curious child who knew that something was going on, but didn’t know exactly what.

  And since the Borg were linked in their minds, what this Borg saw, they all saw.

  Picard pressed the field again. “You don’t want them to see what you’ll have to do to get her,” he said, “do you, Lore?”

  Lore’s expression went cold with bitterness. He wanted to remain perfect in the minds of his followers.

  “There will be a better time,” he said. “You’re very bright, Captain Picard, you know that? Basic, but bright.” He swung to Troi and pinched her chin appreciatively. “I’ll be back, you can be sure. I’ll have you all to myself when the time is right.”

  Mustering his pride and a posture that would work, he spun a
round like a toy solder and walked out.

  When he was gone, the Borg guard maneuvered the forcefield back into place at the entrance, and Picard and Troi could reach each other again.

  “Are you all right?” the captain asked her quietly.

  “Of course,” Troi said, as though she’d been pawed by some lummox in a bar. “Sir, did you notice something about that encounter?”

  “Yes, I certainly did. He wasn’t sure what to do to keep his deity intact. He hasn’t got things quite as well planned out for the long run as he is proclaiming. He has the next few minutes worked out and a vague idea of the future, but it’s very vague.”

  “And that means he can be surprised,” she added.

  With lowered brow and shoulders tensed, Picard turned to the forcefield and gazed down the stark corridor.

  “Let’s surprise him.”

  The Caverns

  “These caverns have tunnels that run beneath the compound. Some of them are connected to the environmental control system and then to the corridors in the compound.”

  Hugh’s voice still held remnants of the robotic buzz, but only on certain syllables. He was definitely not just Borg anymore, and confused or not, he could never go back.

  Will Riker ducked to avoid getting clipped in the forehead by more low-hanging rock, but he kept his thoughts to himself.

  “Show us,” Worf said as he brought up the rear. “If we can determine the geography of the compound, we can form a plan to rescue our crewmates.”

  “You will never get them away from Lore,” Hugh said. “We are on a hopeless quest.”

  His voice sagged as he led them through the dim maze of rock.

  Riker stepped close to Hugh’s side. “Nothing is hopeless until you give up. Of all the things you’ve learned, how have you missed that? You’re the one who has defied Lore better and longer than any of us. Can’t you give yourself credit for that?”

  “I deserve no credit,” the sad cyborg said. “Lore knows we escaped. Sooner or later he will find out about this place. He will come here, and we will all be killed.”

  “If it’s all so hopeless, why don’t you just surrender to him?” Riker asked.

  Hugh’s shoulders were slumped and his gait uncertain as he walked before them, casting a beam of light from a mechanical implement on his right shoulder. “I don’t know,” he said simply.

  “It’s a thing we call risk, Hugh,” Riker said. “And good old-fashioned defiance. Freedom carries a price. You know about it, even though you don’t think you do. It’s almost instinctive in living beings, and you’re alive, Hugh.”

  Hugh didn’t turn his head. He pressed his lips tight, his jaw moving as though he wanted to speak but couldn’t muster the right words. He paced forward, leading the way, his feet heavy, as if he were dragging his awakening conscience.

  Riker spoke again. “You know, Hugh, you’re wrong about us. We had an opportunity to use you to completely destroy the Borg collective, and you know what? We didn’t do it.”

  Hugh looked up at him.

  Riker leaned forward, determined to get his message across.

  “The collective attacked the Federation and killed tens of thousands of people before we were lucky enough to stop it. We still haven’t finished rebuilding. We had a way to insert in you a complete shutdown of all Borg—one big computer virus. We could’ve used you to put an end to the Borg threat. What would the collective have done to us, given the same chance?”

  “Then why didn’t you do it?” Hugh asked, his face crimped in the poor light.

  “Because it would’ve been wrong!”

  Riker’s heart was pounding. He heard it drumming in his ears. He needed Hugh on their side, but even more, he suddenly wanted to get another message across. If he died trying to wrap all this up, at least he would’ve managed to deliver this one bit of mail from one civilization to another.

  “We were trying to do what was right,” he said. “Not just right for us, but just right. If you don’t see any difference between us and Lore, then you’re not looking. It would’ve been a violation of everything we are as a species, and Captain Picard knew that. He endured a hell of sleepless nights and a good dressing-down from Starfleet because of the decision to let you go, but that’s what life is. Decisions! When you became an individual, we sent you back to live an individual life, because that’s what you wanted. Which society do you want these new Borg to be part of?”

  Squinting in the dimness, Riker watched Hugh as the faint light wobbled and played across their faces. “These kinds of choices, Hugh . . . this is what it means to be alive.”

  Finally he sighed and stepped back. “Hugh, my friend,” he said, “I think we believe in you more than you believe in yourself.”

  Geordi tried to raise his arms for the tenth time, and for the tenth time was reminded of the straps holding him onto some kind of a tilted platform. It wasn’t a bed or even a cot; it was some sort of examination platform. He felt like a creature in a story lying on a doctor’s table.

  Terror kept his breathing so shallow that he was starting to feel faint. He tried to take a deep breath or two, get some oxygen into his brain and some courage into the rest of him, but it was hard to be brave. He was alone, he couldn’t see, he couldn’t move, and his best friend had been talking about experimentation.

  Not a formula for peace of mind.

  He tried to sniff for clues—literally—and listen for them, but wearing the VISOR all these years had spoiled him. It worked so much better than simple vision that he didn’t pay much attention to his other senses. It had been years since he’d had to walk and move and get along without it.

  Why hadn’t he taken the time to learn? He had always had so many other things to do, and the Enterprise had always been a perfect haven. He tended the ship, the ship protected him in return, and he always had the VISOR to do his seeing for him.

  Now it was gone.

  Was that a sound? Was somebody out there?

  Footsteps? By looking at the floor with his VISOR, he could tell if someone had walked there. He didn’t usually bother to listen.

  “Data?” he began. “Is somebody there?”

  For a moment there was only the bizarre silence and a feeling that he wasn’t alone.

  Then: “Geordi.”

  “Captain!” How had Picard gotten away from the Borg? Did it matter? He was here!

  “Shh,” the captain said. “We’re getting out of here.”

  “Hurry,” Geordi gasped. “Data was just here. He went to get something—”

  “Too late.” Data’s voice.

  Geordi drew a harsh breath and held it. He’d been fooled. Data’s voice-replication ability.

  “My brother suggested I try to develop my sense of humor,” Data said. “What do you think?”

  Horror took Geordi by the innards. Data’s talk of experiments was like something out of a gruesome story, but this . . . Data wasn’t just doing what needed to be done. He was purposely tormenting his subject and calling it humor.

  Geordi tried to pull away as he heard Data approach, but the straps allowed him almost no movement. “I think it needs a little work.”

  Data was standing beside the platform—Geordi could sense his presence and feel himself start to sweat again.

  A whistling sound, very faint . . . something at the side of his head, at his temple, where the VISOR terminal was. He heard the whistle begin, then felt it vibrate into the side of his head.

  “What’s happening?” he asked, his voice shivering.

  “I am neutralizing your pain receptors,” Data said bluntly.

  Geordi swallowed hard. Data didn’t seem to real ize that the pain could be taken away, but the fear wasn’t going with it. “What are you doing to me?”

  He heard the click and bump as Data put down one device and picked up another.

  “I am implanting nano-cortenide fibers in your cortex that are designed to learn and mimic your neural firing patterns.”


  Something was happening. Geordi felt the pressure at the side of his head, as though a dentist were working on a numbed tooth. He knew there was cold-blooded work being done, felt the pushing on the side of his head and a faint sizzling sensation in his skull.

  Sweat poured down his face, broke over his jaw, and drained down his neck. His hands were trembling, pulling up against the straps.

  “Once they are in place,” Data’s voice continued, “I will destroy your existing brain cells and see if the artificial neural network is able to take over cognitive functions.”

  “Data, listen to me!” Geordi gasped, trying to keep his tone level. “Lore is controlling you. He’s transmitting some kind of carrier wave that’s affecting your positronic matrix.”

  “If the procedure is successful,” Data continued, “your cognitive processing functions will be considerably improved.”

  Desperate now, Geordi raised his voice. “Don’t you care that he’s manipulating you?”

  “However, there is approximately a seventy percent chance that you will not survive the procedure.”

  More pressure. More sizzling. Faint movement against his skull—Geordi gritted his teeth. Weakness flooded into his limbs. If he could only see . . . see mutilation coming, maybe death coming . . .

  “I don’t care much for those odds,” he murmured.

  A pause, and Data’s voice added, “They are cause for concern.”

  Concern . . . Was there some part of Data that still cared about him?

  He searched frantically for a logical way to awaken the lingering devotion he thought he heard. If there was a chance—

  “However,” Data went on, “since I also have Counselor Troi and Captain Picard, the odds are that the procedure will be successful on at least one of you.”

  The cold truth hit Geordi square in the face. He’d misunderstood. And there was nothing he could say that would stop Data from drilling neural fibers into the skull of what once had been his closest friend.

  Kind Data, dependable Data, decent and ethical Data, who wouldn’t have allowed this mutilation and torture to happen in a million years.

  If only Data were really here.

  Geordi gritted his teeth harder. As if to mock his fading hope and fan his fear, the pressure at the side of his head began again.