Metamorphosis - Jean Lorrah [71]
“You mean they’re making you pass all your tests over again?” she asked. “It is necessary. If they did not, I could be left unfit for duty in some undiscovered way. On an away team assignment, or even on the bridge, such a flaw could prove fatal, to me or to a fellow crew member.”
“You’re right, of course,” she agreed. “You don’t seem to be having much trouble adjusting.”
“In many ways the physical adjustments are easier than the mental ones,” he told her. “The Elysians gave me a body in perfect health.
Dare says I will probably not keep it in the peak of condition, and he is probably right. I’m not security; I will not want to devote more than a minimum time to exercise. There is so much to do, and humans are robbed of almost a third of their time by the requirement of sleep.”
She laughed. “But sleep is one of life’s pleasures.”
“It is? I don’t even remember it, only the moment of panic when I woke up this morning thinking someone had turned me off.”
“You’ll see,” she said. “May I show you some strokes?” Data suddenly remembered Geordi, but his friend had made a strategic retreat and was now sitting on one of the lounges at the edge of the pool, talking to Riker. So Data accepted Pris’s offer. She taught him only one stroke, something called a crawl even though it was one of the most efficient swimming strokes humans could use. After a great deal of splashing and sinking, he finally got his arms, legs, and head working together, and he and Pris swam side by side for a time.
“I think I’m shriveled up enough,” Pris announced. For a moment Data didn’t understand, then saw how his own skin had wrinkled up from the exposure to the water. It began to smooth out again the moment they got out of the pool.
The sonics in the changing rooms dried them instantly. Pris emerged in a soft blue dress the color of her eyes, her hair a halo of blond curls. Data’s hair was also free of anything to tame it, for he had not brought any such thing with him. Neither had Riker, he noticed; apparently after swimming it was acceptable to be rather disheveled; for although the first 197 officer had changed back into his uniform and was now up on the deck with the captain, his hair fell in a fringe over his forehead. “Would you like to have dinner here?”
Data suggested to Pris. Tempting food smells floated in the air, and after the exercise he was quite hungry. The deck above the pool had been transformed into an outdoor restaurant through the magic of the holodeck.
Data allowed Pris to suggest the menu, and discovered that he liked roast beef and baked potato, that his palate seemed neutral toward carrots, and he did not care at all for the taste of either mustard or horseradish. More “acquired tastes,” it seemed. His salad, though, was the first thing that tasted as it always had-the raw greens had little flavor, while the texture felt the same to a human as to an android.
As they ate, Data found himself able to hold a conversation at the same time, as well as maintain a free-floating awareness of Pris as a beautiful and desirable woman. He remembered when they had first met on Treva, how intrigued Pris had been with him. He recalled accessing his flirtation files for a pleasant interlude that had led nowhere.
Tonight, he discovered, he was flirting without the aid of data banks, and enjoying it. , Until Tasha crossed his mind. If he had been human then, he would have responded to her in this strange new way. Or if Tasha were still alive-She would be over there with Dare, he realized, taking the opportunity to be with the man she had loved since the day he rescued her from the hellhole of her home planet. In fact, by this time they would probably have gone off to be alone together.
“Data?” Pris questioned. “Where did you go?”
“I am sorry,” he replied, his pleasant mood broken. “Please forgive me, Pris. I am still learning to be human, and sometimes I don’t do a very good job of it.
She smiled. “I think you’re charming. You just have to learn how to relax when