Immortal Coil - Jeffrey Lang [85]
Disappearing around the curve of the hall, Data heard his guide say, “Why, Mr. Data, I believe we are about to be under siege.”
“You’d better sit down,” Vaslovik said a short time later in his workshop. “This might be a little disorienting. I’ve identified the relevant memory clusters. There shouldn’t be any problem if Soong was still using the same file structure he learned with me back in the old days.”
“And if he did not?” Data asked.
“Good question. Possibly just a light show. It might feel a lot like a dream. Have you ever dreamed?”
“Yes.”
“Ever had a psychotic episode?”
“No.”
“Well, get ready. It might be like that, too.”
“Intriguing.”
Then Vaslovik touched a contact, and Data’s world rippled, swirled and finally dissolved.
PART THREE
Seventy Years Ago
… SET HIS LEGS AGAINST the face of the cliff, raised his hands to his mouth, and, after lifting his breathing mask, puffed onto them in three quick, sharp breaths. The battery packs for the warming coils in his gloves …
…Nobody had said anything about this —sub-zero temperatures, practically no atmosphere and freakish rock formations… .
… felt a jolt as he cracked his knee on a rock… . He could feel the bite of the cord as it slid through his gloves, but there was no sensation of his descent slowing. Cord must be wet, he decided.
And, then, another shock—
*
… “Don’t play games with me, Ira,” Vaslovik said impatiently. “Use your tools—all of them, including your brain. What does your intuition tell you?” …
… “You’re saying that Starfleet thought this technology was so dangerous, they destroyed it? Then, with all due respect, Professor, exactly what the hell are we doing here?” …
… Vaslovik was studying the scene intently, apparently trying to reconstruct events from half a million years ago. “If it fell face first, then it was facing the large apparatus when it expired. It may have come here to repair itself, but collapsed before it reached the mechanism… .”
… “Now that we’ve settled that, someone give me a hand here.” Vaslovik slipped his hands under the android’s arms and finished, “We don’t have forever… .”
“Amazing,” Graves breathed. “There’s still power.” He read his tricorder and swallowed loudly. “A lot of power. Who could build a generator that would survive half a million years?”
Someone was standing next to him, a man dressed in cold-weather gear and holding a very old tricorder… .
… Something was wrong. Data’s consciousness was bleeding into someone else’s. It was like he was descending a mine shaft on a very slow elevator.
And he saw that he was staring down at a pair of hands—human hands with bleeding knuckles. Familiar hands, yet unfamiliar, his own, yet not his own. Like a layer of oil separating from water, Data’s consciousness settled into its own strata. The tiny pictures that had shivered up out of his emotion chip were scattering, like sea creatures rising up out of the depths, some silver and flashing brightly, others dim and hidden by eddying currents. Memories, Data realized. These are Soong’s memories.
I have become my father.
Data attempted to focus on the events unfolding around him, though it was difficult. At first, it seemed that Soong could not or would not let his attention rest on any one event or object for more than a millisecond. At the same time, Data became aware that Soong would study the most mundane details—a piece of loose skin on his cuticle, the way Ira Graves constantly touched his nose, the play of light on the control surfaces—far longer than seemed necessary. Data could only relax after he admitted to himself that he had no control over events … and then he began to wonder if that was really his thought … or Soong’s… .
It seemed to Soong (and, therefore, to Data, too) that Vaslovik quickly lost interest in the question of whether the android could be repaired and revived. As soon as he and Graves had dragged the inert (but still disconcertingly supple) form to the machine and placed it on the turntable, Vaslovik began to pace back and forth from the outer hatch, through the