Metamorphosis - Jean Lorrah [105]
Their evening went no further than dinner and public entertainment afterward; Data was still following Geordi’s advice to let the woman set the pace, and it became apparent that Lee Ann was just a bit unsure of what a senior officer might expect of her. He made sure she felt no pressure on that account, and simply enjoyed her company through dinner and a concert performed by some of the crew who had formed a very fine string quartet.
After that, Data and Lee Ann went their separate ways. And the next morning Data woke again with that sense that he had done something wrong-that somehow he had betrayed someone! Whom did he think he had betrayed? Tasha? But she would never be jealous, even if she were still alive. No, his feelings could not be about Tasha. Flashes of his dreams were starting to surface —he remembered one from last night in which he was with a woman. A brunette. Lee Ann, but not Lee Ann. A face he could not pull into the forefront of his memory, but someone he knew. Someone he … loved? That was not possible. He didn’t know any woman well enough to love her. “I need that information now, if you please, Mr. Data.”
To his horror, he didn’t even know what information the captain had asked for. He glanced over at Wesley, who asked, “Has Starfleet ever had an armed confrontation with the Waykani before, Captain?” That was enough for Data to recall that on the periphery of his attention Picard had asked for specs on the Waykani space fleet.
Glad the captain could not see his burning face, Data rapidly punched up the statistics while Picard told Wesley, “We are not going to have a confrontation now, if we can avoid it, Ensign.”
They didn’t have to avoid it; the fleet of heavily armed vessels had no interest in the Enterprise. They passed by, incommunicado, but their course told where they were headed: the Samdian Sector, “The war is on,” Worf remarked.
“So it appears, Lieutenant,” Picard replied, “but it is not our war. Mr. Data, I don’t expect to have to repeat an order on my bridge.” “No, sir. It won’t happen again.”
It didn’t the rest of that watch, but Wesley had to track Data down in Ten-Fore later, as he had forgotten they had a lesson scheduled. His computer would have reminded him, but he had not returned to his quarters. “I owe you an apology for forgetting our appointment,” Data told the boy, “and thanks for “getting me off the hook’ with the captain today. I didn’t know 292 what he had asked me for till you mentioned the Waykani.”
“Data,” Wesley said with genuine concern, “what’s wrong? You didn’t make mistakes like that when you first came back from Elysia.”
“I don’t know,” Data admitted.
“Possibly this is … a letdown, after the tension of learning to be human, coping with requalifying, and the stress everyone was under with the Samdian situation.” He smiled. “I may be overconfident. I just have to face the fact that I can’t think about two things at once anymore.”
The lie flowed so smoothly that Data hardly realized he was twisting the truth. Wesley appeared to accept what he said. it was only later that he realized what he had done. As an android he had been perfectly capable of lying when a situation called for it; what had been hard was recognizing the situation, and then producing a convincing lie. Why was so much about being human negative?
And his dreams continued, night after night, although he could never see the face of his dream woman.
Definitely hormones! Data told himself. Yet he found himself looking forward to the dreams, which were now quite pleasant. Then one day communications from Dare and his gang stopped. An ion storm? A hasty evacuation in which there was no time to send messages?
Or the exigencies of war?
With that nagging worry foremost on his mind, he went for another interminable session