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“Not now, Data,” snapped Riker, and broke into a fast walk.

“Then again, perhaps not,” said Data to himself. He added another query to his running list of perplexing human behaviors.

Dr. Iovino wiped the water off the front of her uniform. “I guess you’ve had enough,” she said, pulling the glass away from Moses. She hadn’t yet convinced him what fun it would be to stop playing the drinking game with his meals.

“No!” shouted the boy emphatically.

“I thought you might say that.” She talked to him constantly and his understanding seemed to be growing rapidly, almost as if he were already familiar with the language, yet he had been slow to talk. At the moment he possessed a vocabulary of one word. “In case you’re interested, your behavioral development is right on schedule.”

“No!”

“Exactly my point. That’s why it’s called the ‘terrible twos.’ Right?” Then she answered her own questions so that together they cried out the inevitable, “No!” Moses giggled with delight at the chorus of their voices.

A shadow fell across the floor and Iovino looked up to see who had entered the room. She recognized the woman as one of the survivors of the USS Ferrel and suspected that Ruthe was somehow connected to the child’s unexplained appearance in sickbay. She seemed something like a shy child herself. Lisa ignored Ruthe’s presence and continued talking to the boy.

“Look what I’ve got.” Iovino held up a piece of chocolate. Moses had made the leap forward to solid food and this was one of his favorite items. “Do you want some?”

“No!” he declared happily.

She whisked it behind her back and waited for his reaction. When he started to whimper, she spoke very clearly. “But you said you didn’t want it.”

Despite his sulking, he listened carefully to what she said.

“Do you want some?” Iovino proferred the treat again. “Yes?”

His lower lip stopped quivering. “Yesss,” he said with an exaggerated sibilance. He grabbed the treat from her hand and was all smiles again.

“He looks happy,” said Ruthe with a hint of surprise in her voice.

“He’s got a good disposition. Moses will do fine wherever he ends up.” The doctor frowned at her own comment. She had been so busy with his present welfare that she hadn’t really thought about his future. Suddenly, she was curious as to what would happen to this strange child.

“I wonder if they’re all like him.”

“All of who?” asked Iovino. Now the surprise was hers.

“The other children. I’ve tried not to think about them, but maybe they’re happy, too.”

The woman left as abruptly as she had appeared, leaving Iovino alone to ponder that tantalizing scrap of information. Thoughtfully, the doctor watched Moses eat the last crumbs of candy. He nibbled with dainty bites that left his face remarkably clean for such a young child, but then, the boy hated to get dirty. Wet was all right, however. “Just think, Moses. More kids like you.”

“Yesss,” he said with great conviction.

Jason slipped out of life quickly and quietly.

He floated in peace for a full minute before the medic team reached the holodeck and shattered the illusion of the Choraii sphere. A knot of people, with Beverly Crusher at the center, gathered over the man laid out on the hard surface of the unadorned compartment. Harsh mechanical chatters and raised voices echoed between the flat walls as the emergency revival equipment was activated over and over again.

Ruthe watched the doctors fight over the pale, still body, but she knew their frantic efforts were in vain. Jason had escaped.

Dr. Crusher was slumped over the desk, her head cradled in her arms, but Picard saw there was too much tension in her spine for her to be asleep. He took another step forward into the office.

“Beverly?” She straightened in place but didn’t speak to him. “You’ve lost patients before,” he said softly.

“Injured ones, yes,” she answered at last. “With wounds too severe for me to heal or diseases that can’t be cured. Those deaths are unavoidable. But Jason