Immortal Coil - Jeffrey Lang [91]
When he finally made it home, Noonien Soong slept for thirty-six hours. When he awoke, he ate more food in one sitting than he customarily ate in three days, then went back to sleep for another four or five hours. All in all, he managed to stay away from Vaslovik’s lab for almost three days. When he finally marshaled his resources and went to see the professor (he had many questions), Soong found Graves picking among the odds and ends in an otherwise empty lab.
“Gone?” Soong asked.
“Gone,” Graves said.
“How long?”
“Not sure. At least two days. Maybe more.”
So, the trail was cold. Soong didn’t even bother to ask about the androids. There was no point.
Neither man ever spoke of the expedition again.
Chapter Twenty-Two
DATA FELT HIS CONSCIOUSNESS disentangle itself from Soong’s, then floated briefly in a detached, calm silver place. He wondered if this was how humans felt in the moment between sleep and wakefulness, just before the cares and concerns of the day began to filter in. Then, reality as Data perceived it snapped into sharp focus and he was once again aware of the span of a millisecond.
Vaslovik was standing exactly where he had been when the journey through Soong’s memories began. Data reached up and closed the back of his head. “I met Dr. Graves several years ago, before he died. He, too, never hinted at any of this. But he did develop a process by which he could transfer a human mind into an artificial intelligence. He used it on me.”
“I’m aware of the incident you’re referring to. I’m afraid that despite his accomplishments, Graves’s mortality made him bitter as he grew older. He almost forgot many of the things I tried to teach him in his youth. I’d like to think he remembered them when he finally released you.”
“Perhaps,” Data said, then changed the subject. “So when the attack came on Galor IV,” he asked as he folded the cable, “you knew who your enemy was all along?”
“Suspected,” Vaslovik said. “I couldn’t be certain. Seventy years is a long time … even to me. And, believe it or not, the Exo III androids weren’t the first people I thought of who might want to kill me. I’ve made a few other enemies in my life.”
“I believe you.”
Vaslovik smiled at Data’s comment, then sobered quickly. “But when the attempt was made against the project—against Rhea—I knew I had to take countermeasures. Escape was not so difficult. I’ve become very good at that sort of thing. But hiding the android after it was activated and finding a way to ferret out my opponents—that was a problem.”
“So you chose to conceal her on the Enterprise, only days after the incident in the lab.”
“Compared to other deceptions I’ve perpetrated, crafting the identity of Starfleet Lieutenant Rhea McAdams was a relatively simple matter,” Vaslovik explained. “It was also an ideal solution, given the circumstances. The Enterprise effectively hid her in plain sight while offering her the best protection, and also put her in a unique position to uncover our foes. And, in truth, there was another reason.”
“Which was?”
“You,” Vaslovik said. “Rhea is more human than you because she was designed to be. But only the experience of observing you among the other humanoids would enable her to understand how she herself might fit in.”
Data then experienced an emotion he had not encountered previously: embarrassment. He did not feel comfortable with the idea of a person for whom he had developed such strong feelings … studying him. The wave of discomfort lasted for only two point four seconds—while Vaslovik inhaled and ordered his mind for another thought—but that was, as Data could have explained, a very long time for an android.
But then Vaslovik resumed his train of thought. “Being aboard the Enterprise was also a test of her abilities, of the emotional algorithms we had programmed into her positronic net. It worked better than I could have dreamed. Not only was Rhea McAdams indistinguishable from a human being,