Immortal Coil - Jeffrey Lang [31]
“You became friends,” Data realized.
Rhea grinned brightly, then surprised Data by reaching up and lightly touching his cheek. “You are a rare treasure, Mr. Data, and you have a way with words.”
Data did not reply immediately because he was too stunned to speak. People rarely initiated physical contact with him and he was uncertain how to respond. Rhea’s gesture, in particular, had confused him, being neither openly flirtatious nor purely platonic. He consulted his behavioral files, but found very little that was useful. Data decided his best response was to catalog observations and review them later.
And then, several milliseconds after these insights and decisions had been filed, there came a warm sensation of pleasure that began at the spot where Rhea had touched his cheek and radiated outward and down through Data’s neural net. His emotional responses, Data noted, always seemed to lag behind his intellectual observations.
Data sipped the Cabernet and decided he liked it. Rhea returned to the dining area to check on the dinner and Data followed.
“What are we having if we are not having fish?”
“At first, I thought to make you real sukiyaki because replicator beef is actually pretty good and they grow scallions in the arboretum, but then I wondered if you might be a vegetarian. Are you?”
“I do not think so,” he said.
“Well,” Rhea said, checking a pair of pots on a small heating device, “you are tonight. Fettucini with marinara sauce and a mushroom salad. Figured I’d be on safe ground.” She stirred the sauce, then stripped the foil pouch off two servings of pasta and threw them into the boiling water. “Okay,” she said, “I’ve talked enough for now. I’m cooking; you talk.”
“What would you like me to talk about?”
“Tell me about your mother,” Rhea said, opening a cabinet door. “What was she like?”
Data sat on one of the two metal stools that stood next to the counter and rested his wineglass on his knee. “I did not know her very well,” Data said. “We met for the first time only four years ago and had seen each other on only a few occasions since then.” He stopped and thought, trying to encapsulate the things he remembered about their visits. “She was a fine scientist; she did not like to cook, but enjoyed cleaning up afterward; most of her earrings were green because she liked the way it went with her hair; she wished to learn how to make pottery on a wheel, but never had time …”
Rhea, who had ceased searching the cabinets for a colander and was listening attentively, asked, “Yes, what else?”
Data tipped his glass from side to side, observing the play of the refracted light in the ruby liquid. Finally, after what seemed a long time to him, he said very softly, “She might have learned how to turn pots if she had known she was an android.” He reached up and dabbed at his eyelids with his fingertips. They came away wet. “I have decided that I could grow weary of this feeling very soon.”
“What feeling?” Rhea asked quietly.
Data sipped some wine and thought about trying to change the subject. He knew this was considered acceptable behavior, but, unaccountably, he decided to try to answer her question. “I do not yet know how to identify it,” he said finally. “Regret, perhaps. Not for myself or my own life, but for the opportunities that they missed.” Data didn’t say who “they” were, but Rhea seemed to understand who he meant: Lore, Lal, the nameless androids and even Juliana Tainer, who (by Dr. Soong’s standards) had lived a long, full life. “The changes in my emotional status from moment to moment have taken a toll,” Data concluded. “I have fought Borg drones with my bare hands, but never before in my life have I felt so battered.”
Rhea began to reach across the counter, but then the pasta