Metamorphosis - Jean Lorrah [87]
Some of the children began to cry. “There’s definitely something wrong,” Dare said.
The group stopped, the adults lined them up, and just stared at them, it seemed. Most of them stopped crying, but one little girl shifted from sniffling to wailing. An older girl turned and put her arms around the crying child-and her mouth moved. “That child is speaking!” Data exclaimed. The crying child said something back.
“The children have a spoken language and the adults do not?” Dare questioned. “That makes no sense.”
“Unless,” Thralen said pensively, “those are not Konor children.” The scene continued. The two adults came to the children who were conversing, separated them, forced their struggling hands down to their sides, and put gentle fingers on their lips. Each one then stared into the eyes of the child he or she was calmingcomforting?-and the little girls’ tears abated.
All the children moved obediently back into line, and the procession continued.
“Bloody hell!” Sdan said in a vehement whisper. “That’s the way Vulcan parents help their kids learn emotional control. Little doubt now that the Konor are telepaths.”
“But those children spoke, was Thralen said. “Data-was “Look!” Poet pointed excitedly, as the little girl who had cried so hard suddenly broke from the line of children and ran back across the plaza the way they had come.
They watched, mesmerized. The man led the other children away, while the woman doubled back after the fleeing girl. The picture followed the child and her pursuer, taking them into an area unseen before, where perhaps thirty more children were held in cages. “Bloody bastards!” Poet swore as he viewed the picture of terrified children caged like animals, some beating futilely on the bars, some crying, and some huddled hopelessly on the floor of their prison. The little girl ran to a cage where a boy a bit older sat against the bars. When she came up to him, he thrust his hands through, and she grasped them, sobbing.
The boy spoke to her, then tried to push her away just as the woman caught up and grabbed the little girl away from him.
The child fought, kicking, scratching, biting-but not for long. After a moment she stopped, screaming as if she were herself in pain, while the woman who held her set her down, put her hands on the child’s shoulders, and stared into her face with a smug expression. The girl subsided into hopeless weeping. The woman turned to the boy staring in anguish … and spoke to him.
“They can speak!” Aurora exclaimed. “But-how can they treat children that way? It’s inhuman!”
“These cannot possibly be Konor children,” Thralen said. “Data, I thought you had accessed all records on the Konor.”
“Everything in the computer, which is practically nothing.”
“What about the Samdians?” the Theskian asked. “I got the same briefing as everyone else,” he replied, and suddenly swallowed hard as he realized that he had not followed through on it.
Data should have had the biological specifications of the Samdians ready at hand, but he didn’t. As an android he had had all data on all species known to the Federation in his personal memory banks, adding to it as new lifeforms were discovered; there was no need to access the information until there was an application for it.
As a human, though, he should have called it up from the ship’s computer immediately. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I have allowed this investigation to proceed on incomplete information.”
The scene they had been watching ended with nothing more dramatic than the woman leading the grim-faced little girl away.
“Computer,” Data addressed the ship’s system, “biological briefing on the Samdians.”
And there it was, the missing information that made sense of what was happening on Dacket: The Konor had not arrived from some unknown sector of the galaxy, but from right there in the Samdian Sector! Samdians, it seemed, were all born with green-gold skin and lavender hair. That coloration continued until puberty, when