Immortal Coil - Jeffrey Lang [81]
Data closed his eyes and listened to his chest expanding and contracting, a sound both foreign and familiar. How long had it been since he had done this, simply listened to himself breathe? Had he ever? Then, slowly, he allowed his other senses to unfold until he could feel the brush of air from the ventilation system against his skin. He heard fluids moving through plumbing. The fragrance of cherries and sandalwood wafted through the air. The thought brought a small smile to his face, but then he found himself thinking of the Enterprise. Data had a vague memory of a space battle with … Who? The memories were disjointed, fragmented, and this disturbed him.
He opened his eyes, scanned the room and found the door. It opened as he approached onto a wide, shadowy corridor that curved away to both the right and the left.
Data cocked his head and realized he had been listening to music—a piano—since he had awakened. How odd that he had not been consciously aware of this. He turned to his left and walked slowly, all the while trying to determine whether the music was growing fainter or louder. He stopped once to study a small pencil study of a horse’s head and shoulders done in the style of da Vinci. Data corrected himself. It wasn’t done in the style of da Vinci. If the story was to be believed, this was a da Vinci. Though wealth of any kind meant virtually nothing to Data, he could not help but be aware that the tiny framed square of paper he was looking at was probably as valuable as the entire contents of any given half-dozen Terran museums. He shook his head, but did not linger. There were other mysteries to be plumbed.
He came to a door, this one obviously constructed to withstand sudden changes in pressure. He pressed the control stud and it slid open onto a chamber, this one much bigger than the one where he had awakened. The room was outfitted with several large pieces of diagnostic equipment, some of which Data recognized. Others were obviously ancient, but well-tended and still functional. When he stepped into the room, alcoves around the perimeter lit up shadowy figures within.
Data cautiously approached the first alcove and it was a male humanoid, middle-aged, and he was wearing a two-toned jumpsuit. There was a hole in its abdomen in the distinctive burn pattern of a phaser blast, revealing dead circuitry within. There was a small label at the base of the display that read simply BROWN. The name meant nothing to Data.
The next case held another humanoid figure, the only undamaged one in the collection. Data found its baffled expression to be slightly comical. He had no doubt that it had been constructed to resemble a Terran, but there was a slipshod quality about its construction. The label said NORMAN. Once again, the name meant nothing in particular to him.
The last two cases were the most interesting because Data knew for a fact that Noonien Soong had studied them. The first case displayed a pair of unfinished androids labeled THALASSA and HENOCH. Though James Kirk’s encounter with the survivors of the ancient civilization that had created these bodies was not one of his more noteworthy adventures, Data had made the tale a topic of special research in the Academy when he had learned of it. On more than one occasion, he had wondered how different a status he might enjoy if Sargon’s people had followed through with their plan to house their minds in these shells.
But the last display held the most intriguing form. It was Rayna—or one of the Rayna androids, in any case. As he had on more than one occasion, Data wondered if Kirk, Spock and McCoy had ever marveled at the number of times they had encountered artificial intelligences. Of course, the Enterprise under Kirk’s command had been one of the most widely traveled starships in history, but he wondered if there might have been some other factor in action.
It had been during his encounter with Kirk that Flint—or Akharin or Vaslovik—had discovered that he was no longer immortal. McCoy had theorized that the peculiar regenerative