Distant Shores - Marco Palmieri [154]
“It grew a shell,” said Lessing.
“That doesn’t matter,” said B’Elanna. “Even if it is an organic lifeboat- “
“Ovule,” the Doctor chimed in. “We’re calling it an ovule.”
Whatever. “Even if it is some kind of lifeboat,” she went on, “it failed. The crew either vacated or they died. You found bodies.”
“The bodies aren’t the crew,” said Lessing. “Not really.”
“They looked real enough to me,” said B’Elanna, wondering exactly how much pressure it would take to snap Lessing’s neck.
“Think about it, Lieutenant,” said Lessing. “The Moyani aren’t from this galaxy. Clearly their home environment includes a couple of physical laws that we don’t have to contend with. You had to think that yourself, looking at their ship design.”
She had thought that as she had probed the alien ship’s secrets. She’d thought it more than once, in fact. She cursed Lessing silently for knowing that.
“So what happens?” he went on, oblivious of her darkening mood. “They find themselves stuck in an alien environment whose physical laws are nothing like what they have at home. They’re alone. Their lifeboat is damaged. How do they survive?”
“They don’t,” said B’Elanna. “They didn’t. Obviously.”
“They used the technology that produced their ship to try to grow bodies that would be compatible with local conditions,” said Lessing. “But, you’re right. They did fail.”
“So, what’s the problem?” said B’Elanna. “Organic or not, it’s still just a dead ship with a dead crew.”
No one spoke for a moment, and B’Elanna thought at first that she’d made her point. Then it occurred to her that they were all on one side of the conference table, sitting, while she stood on the other.
They’d already had this discussion, she realized, already argued all the points. Somehow Lessing had already convinced them. Somehow he had already won.
“The Moyani aren’t dead,” said Captain Janeway when it was clear that no one else wanted to bite the bullet.
“Well, then we should talk to them about their cloaking technology,” said B’Elanna. “Because I haven’t seen a single one.”
“You have, B’Elanna,” said Janeway. “You’ve spent more time with them than anyone.”
B’Elanna was sure she could feel her brain frying inside her skull. Had everyone gone crazy?
“I’m afraid you’re going to have to explain that, Captain,” she said and thought, Before I go insane.
“It’s the AI,” said Janeway. “The crew are the ship’s AI.”
B’Elanna stood there in stunned silence, sinking deeper into a depression whose bottom she couldn’t conceive, much less see.
The Moyani had preserved their consciousness in the exotic material of their ship. There was no AI, no computer, no operating systems or software. There were only the Moyani intelligences, encoded as some kind of bizarre gestalt, in the body of the ship itself.
“So you can see the problem,” said Chakotay. “If we use the last of their power to get home, we’ll strand them here forever.”
“Actually,” said B’Elanna softly as a point of light appeared in her internal gloom. “Actually I don’t see the problem. The Moyani are dead. I’m sorry about that. I really am. They tried to save themselves. They failed. This ship-ovule, if you like-it’s not alive in any real sense. At best what you’ve described is some kind of ceramic vegetable. The AI isn’t the Moyani. It’s just a recording, a template. None of that adds up to life in my book.”
“What does add up to life,” said the Doctor quietly. “In your book.”
“Something that thinks, Doc,” she said. “Something that eats and grows and has some kind of offspring.”
“And you don’t see how the Moyani ovule does all of those things,” he said.
B’Elanna did not. At best the Moyani vessel was nothing more than an extremely sophisticated mechanism.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “But, if there’s a choice between getting us home and the continued existence of some machine, I pick us.”
“I’m a machine,