Immortal Coil - Jeffrey Lang [110]
“And now?” Picard asked.
“And now, Captain, I pay the price for my arrogance and my self-indulgence. More than anyone else, I am responsible for the events that have been set in motion. Now all I ask is the chance to redeem my creations, and myself.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
ALL OF DATA’S SENSES were warning him to move away from the deflector grid. The levels of radiation were becoming unacceptably high, but he didn’t want to go far in case Rhea required his assistance. She did not currently appear to need him for anything, having just waded back into the plasma fountain to do some more damage to the ship.
The ship had come to a complete halt, either because the androids’ leader was holding it in reserve or because Data and Rhea had inflicted serious damage.
Data saw a flicker of purplish light and looked up just in time to see a gap open in space. The second Exo III ship slid forward and the gap closed behind it. Moments later, a second gap opened a short distance away and the ship emerged. Data couldn’t be certain, but he thought he saw the space around the ship’s bow ripple and distort, as if deformed by some kind of energy wave.
Suddenly, the lower half of the main hull of Vaslovik’s station crumbled inward as if it had been struck with a gigantic invisible mallet. Red and pink explosions burst out of open seams, rushing atmosphere fueled brief fires and then the fires were extinguished by their own force.
It was time to go, Data decided, no matter what the consequences. M-5 would not last much longer. If he and Rhea were pulled down toward Odin, well, then so be it. At least they would be together.
But first he would have to get Rhea’s attention. It might mean exposing himself to the heavy doses of radiation that could, he knew, permanently damage his positronic brain. Some say the world will end in fire, he remembered. Some say in ice … The thought almost made him smile. He would have to remember to tell Rhea later if he had the chance. He took a step forward …
… Then stopped.
The waving tendrils of plasma parted like a gauze curtain and there, in the center of the fountain, stood Rhea. Her flesh, the disguise that had made her appear so human, was gone now, stripped away, leaving behind only the unblemished silver sheath that was her true skin, reflecting every spark of energy. She had just finished tearing away another strip of hull plating and pushing it away from the ship. Then, Rhea paused in her labor and held out her hand so that the coruscating globules of energy could stream up through her fingers like bubbles in champagne. Her skin reflected and refracted the light so it looked as if a liquid rainbow danced over her hand.
And for Data, time seemed to slow down, to elongate and narrow down so that he was focused on only that single moment, that single image. And in that timeless instant, Data sensed the sum of the events of the past several days and found that he understood why Captain Picard had insisted he not deactivate his emotion chip. It is a spectrum, he realized.
On one end of the spectrum, he saw the Exo III androids: unchanged for hundreds of thousands of years, locked in a bolus of rage and stagnation, an endless and meaningless existence. Then, at the other extreme was Vaslovik, immortal and seemingly in complete control of his destiny, but unable to embrace his eternal life unless he clung to the illusion of mortality by reinventing himself whenever he felt the weight of time grow too great.
And somewhere in between, there were the Terrans, Betazoids, Klingons and half-dozen other species that formed his circle of friends. All mortals, who, against all reason, both extremes envied. Somehow, they were able to cope with their brief, chaotic spans by grasping onto a single, universal maxim:
Every moment counts.
Data held that thought before him on the tips of his fingers, studied it, then released it.
And then time started again, and he discovered he was holding Rhea’s hand.
Layers of the station were curling away into the void like skin off an onion,