Gulliver's Fugitives - Keith Sharee [43]
The funny thing was, the report had been edited in such a way as to distort what had happened. Riker saw how he was shown unfavorably while Ferris was presented as a hero.
Riker thought perhaps he should complain about it. The idea made him laugh in a gallows-humor sort of way. Laughing made his head hurt worse and he had to stop.
The pain was still very bad when the CS came and took him. He was led past Crichton’s office to a smaller door inscribed with Major Ferris’ name.
Inside, Major Ferris, helmeted and in white dress uniform with twinkling medals, sat behind his desk.
Riker gritted his teeth and tried to speak.
“Where—” he began, but stopped as the pain flared like a welding torch burning into his head.
“Keep your mouth shut,” said Ferris. “The prisoner isn’t allowed to speak until sentence is read.”
Ferris then sentenced Riker to death, using the same words Crichton had used with Picard.
“And my friends?” asked Riker slowly, with great effort.
“I’m not required to speak to you about them, or anything else,” Ferris said stiffly.
Riker pictured Picard, Troi, and Data in small white rooms awaiting execution. He thought how disappointed poor Data must be at the behavior of the humans on this planet. But then he thought, Data’ll throw these fools a curve or two.
Ferris listened to his headset for a moment.
“I am informed,” he said, “that you just committed another crime of fiction-making. You just thought of your android as a person, when he is merely a device.”
“No, he is a person, and that person, and all the rest of my friends and crew, will defeat you,” said Riker. “You can’t imagine how because you can’t imagine anything, but they will.”
Ferris almost replied but stopped himself. Riker could see the hate on his face. Ferris still hadn’t fought him one-on-one and drawn the primal blood he wanted so badly.
“Return the prisoner to his cell,” said Ferris, thick-voiced.
After Riker had been taken away, a CS officer entered and saluted.
“Major Ferris, sir. The Director of Cephalic security is on his way back to his office.”
“Is his health better, Lieutenant?”
“Yes, sir. I talked to him myself. He requests you carry out the executions immediately, starting with the prisoner Picard. The android is already being dismantled.”
In the type of lab known as a “clean room,” with controlled atmosphere to filter out even the smallest dust particles, several men in lab coats and mouth-masks prepared to permanently disassemble Data and learn all of his mechanical secrets.
The technicians were unarmed but wore CS helmets to filter out fiction or blasphemy the android might try to utter. A trio of one-eyes hovered in the background as guards.
Data was lying at an angle, held onto a tilting lab table by several steel restraints. Above him clustered cameras and other recording devices. The dismantling would be well documented.
The CS already knew a lot about Data by what they stole from the minds of the Enterprise crew. But they didn’t know as much as they might. Many of the theories behind Data’s design and construction had been censored by the one-eyes and were never input into the central CS computers. Such theories were unverifiable given current Rampartian knowledge, and had to be classified as criminal science fiction until they could be proven true by actual dismantling of “the Data unit itself.”
The supposed account of Data’s genesis, of the inventor Soong and Data’s “brother” android Lore, and of Data’s entire personal history also had to be censored out of the Rampartian information-pool. The story had the qualities of a fairy tale, especially of a certain abominable children’s story about a wooden puppet who wanted to be human.
“Press its switch,” said one of the technicians. “We’ll take some measurements with the unit powered up. Our schedule allows for some observation before disassembly.”
A white-gloved hand slid under Data’s back and pressed the switch.
Data’s eyes jerked open. He looked about.
Some of the technicians watched him, while others peered at dials and meters