Relics - Michael Jan Friedman [37]
Scott didn’t know exactly where he was going as he stalked along the corridor. What’s more, he didn’t care.
He just had to walk, to get his blood pumping. To figure things out.
If only he were back on his own Enterprise. Then he could have curled up in his quarters with a bottle of fine scotch and bit by bit gotten some perspective on what had happened to him… what was still happening to him.
Scott shook his head. Psychologist indeed. All he needed was a place of refuge where he could wet his whistle and mull it all over.
As he negotiated a curve in the corridor, he couldn’t help but notice the looks he was getting from those who passed him going in the opposite direction. Did they know about him? Had they heard?
And were they going to offer him some advice too? Some twenty-fourth-century psychological gobbledygoop?
Scott was so busy avoiding the gazes of the people in the corridor that he almost overlooked the one set of eyes that wasn’t trained on him. If it wasn’t for their color-a vibrant gold-and the pallor of the skin surrounding them, he would never have given them a second glance.
But he did. And what he saw piqued his curiosity enough for him to do an about-face and head the other way.
His initial assessment had been that the specimen in question was just an alien. A representative of a race that had joined the Federation sometime in the seventy-five years he’d been away. Then some sixth sense-the kind that made him the best ship’s engineer in the fleet of his day-told him otherwise.
This was a mechanical man. An artificial life form. An android-or at least, that’s what they had called them a century ago.
And it was wearing a Starfleet uniform-with a lieutenant’s pips on the collar, no less. This … construct… was an officer on the Enterprise. First Klingons and now this!
Intrigued, Scott accelerated a bit and caught up with the android. Immediately, those golden eyes slid in his direction, taking him in.
“May I be of assistance?” it asked.
Scott chuckled. It even sounded artificial. Its speech pattern was too precise, too perfect… too devoid of emotion to have come from a living pair of vocal cords.
“May ye be of assistance?” the human echoed. Aye, he thought. Ye can assist me in twisting yer bloody head off, so I can get a peek down yer neck to see what makes ye tick.
But he didn’t express that sentiment out loud. He didn’t feel right speaking that way to a fellow officer, even if it was just a thing made of nuts and bolts.
The android tilted his head to one side. It was a subtle movement, but noticeable nonetheless. “You are Captain Scott,” it observed.
So it knew him. But then, if it was an officer on this ship, it would have been its business to know such things.
“Right ye are,” said Scott. “And who might you be?”
“My name is Data,” it replied simply.
Data, eh? “An interesting name,” the human observed.
“I am an android,” it went on, as if it recognized that an explanation might be in order.
“I can see that,” Scott told it. “I’ve seen my share of androids before, y’know. Back at Exo Three, we had one that looked like our captain sitting in the command chair. And then there was the pack that Harry Mudd unleashed on us, though before long he wished he had never considered it. And of course, there was that poor, sweet thing on Holberg Nine-One-Seven-G… I dinnae suppose I need to go on.”
Data nodded. “Nonetheless, you did not expect to see an android serving as an officer on the Enterprise. Correct?”
Scott looked at him. Perceptive, wasn’t he? Had he been that obvious about it? Or had Data just drawn a logical conclusion from the information at hand?
“Something like that,” the human admitted. “So … how did ye come to be an officer here? Were ye built for the purpose?” Another