Star Trek: TNG 064: Immortal Coil

  “COUNSELOR, WHAT ARE YOU SAYING?” PICARD ASKED.

  “I'm saying we may be overlooking something important here, Captain,” Troi said. “I've been monitoring Data's emotions all day, and I can say for certain that though he has been functioning under a great deal of stress, he's been managing it quite well. The only time he gave off an emotional response that truly concerned me is when he realized that you didn't believe him.”

  “Which means . . . what, exactly?” Admiral Haftel asked uncertainly.

  “Data is trying to come to terms with some very complex concepts—among them mortality and isolation,” Troi explained. “These are concepts that even organic beings have trouble understanding. But I believe that something else is happening simultaneously, something we've all been helping him to work toward for years, but perhaps never expected to see happen so suddenly. We just heard him tell us he came to a conclusion without any evidence to back it up, something the best Starfleet officers do routinely. Yes, in Data's case, it could mean a malfunction. Or . . .”

  “Or?” Haftel demanded, clearly not liking where he thought the conversation was leading.

  “Or he's finally developing thought processes that extend beyond the scope of pure fact,” Troi finished, and she could see that the captain had already grasped her meaning.

  “Intuition,” Picard breathed. “Data has developed intuition.”

  IMMORTAL COIL

  Jeffrey Lang

  Based upon STAR TREK and STAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION created by Gene Roddenberry

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  An Original Publication of POCKET BOOKS

  Copyright © 2002 by Paramount Pictures. All Rights Reserved.

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  This book is published by Pocket Books, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc., under exclusive license from Paramount Pictures.

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Pocket Books, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  ISBN: 978-0-7434-4846-8

  POCKET and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Acknowledgments, naturally, to Gene Roddenberry, not only for Star Trek, but for other worlds he created in his career, and one in particular. If I told you here which one I meant, well, what fun would that be? I would also like to thank the many writers, producers and other creative folk who helped populate the Trek universe, most especially to the following for the use of their ideas in this work: Robert Bloch, Richard Manning, Hans Beimler, Tracy Torme, Stephen Kandel, Dan Koeppel, Rene Echevarria, Melinda Snodgrass, Jerome Bixby, John Meredyth Lucas, Boris Sobelman, and John Kingsbridge. No doubt I have inadvertently omitted a few, so my apologies in advance to you all.

  May I request a round of applause for the actors who helped create such indelible characters? In particular, I'd like to offer a tip of the authorial beanie to Mr. Brent Spiner. Many hands may have created his mind, but Spiner gave Data a soul.

  A gracious thank you to friends, family, neighbors, colleagues and the occasional complete stranger who have listened to me alternately wax enthusiastic and whine bitterly about this project. Most especially hugs and manly expressions of affection (where applicable) to Heather Jarman, Helen Atkins, Helen Szigeti, Tristan Mayer, Joshua Macy, my wife, Katie Fritz, and our son, Andrew.

  And last (though most definitely not least), a toast to Marco Palmieri, who said, “I have this idea for a book about Data and the role of artificial intelligence in the Trek universe.” If there was any justice in the universe (or a little more, anyway), his name would be on the cover, too. He'll modestly deny that, but I'm here to tell you that it's true. Thanks, dude.

  Seventy Years Ago

  Someday, thought Noonien Soong, when I have a choice in the matter, I'm going to live where it's always hot. Not warm. Not temperate. Hot.

  Checking to see that his lifeline was secure, Soong set his legs against the face of the cliff, raised his hands to his mouth, and, after lifting his breathing mask, puffed onto them in three quick, sharp breaths. The battery packs for the warming coils in his gloves were dying. When Ira Graves first mentioned this little expedition, he'd told Soong to pack gear for climbing in cold environments. But Soong had interpreted that to mean the sort of conditions you might find in the North American Rockies or, at worst, the lower reaches of the Alps. Nobody had said anything about this —sub-zero temperatures, practically no atmosphere and freakish rock formations. Soong had completed some difficult climbs in his not-quite two decades, but even with the antigravs, the conditions he was currently facing were a little more complex than anything he'd faced before.

  Soong decided to blame everything on Graves. It was convenient. Just because Graves was arrogantly brilliant (or brilliantly arrogant—Soong wasn't sure which) didn't mean he was always perfectly in control of everything. Academia, Soong had concluded, was a pond where the little fish—students like himself—were gobbled up by the bigger fish—grad assistants like Graves—who were, in turn, gobbled up by even bigger fish like Dr. Emil Vaslovik, probably the biggest fish he was ever likely to meet.

  He would have liked to flatter himself by thinking that it was his exemplary work in the artificial intelligence workshops that had brought him to Vaslovik's attention, but Soong understood enough about how the system worked to admit that his mountaineering skills probably had more to do with it. Maybe Vaslovik had heard about the time Soong had climbed the campus clock tower. Going to have to work on curbing those impulses, Noonien . . . Whatever the case, when Graves had contacted him and told him—not invited, but told him—“You're going on a little trip next week,” Soong knew he wasn't really in a position to refuse. So, there he was: halfway down a ninety-meter cliff while the two other men who had brought him here sat on a ledge twenty meters above him. There has got to be a better way to get ahead in life, he decided.

  His scan had revealed that there was another ledge approximately twelve meters below him, but the lantern dangling from his belt wasn't powerful enough to cut the gloom. He was just going to have to trust his abilities and take it slow, the way his father had taught him. Soong activated the comm link inside his breathing mask with the tip of his tongue and said, “I'm going to continue my descent now. Does the tricorder show anything unusual below me?”

  Too loudly, Graves said, “No. Nothing. The cliff face is stable. You should be okay.”

  Soong tapped the comm link again and said, “Not so loud, Ira. You're going to shake me off the cliff.”

  Vaslovik switched on his comm and asked in his grave, yet oddly soothing manner, “Are you all right down there, Noonien?”

  Soong grinned. It was only the fourth time Vaslovik had asked him that in the past twenty minutes. Somehow, he hadn't expected the quadrant's greatest expert on machine intelligence to be quite so . . . grandfatherly. But what did I expect? Someone who spoke in syntactically perfect sentences and glided like a mech on ball bearings? He decided grandfatherly was good, grandfatherly was, in fact, just fine. It helped to make up for Graves who, by contrast, was condescending and just generally insufferable.

  Soong shook himself. That's a good way to get into trouble, Noonien. His father would have cuffed him on the ear. Think about what you're doing, about where you're placing your foot next. The cold was getting to him. He could feel himsel
f drifting.

  Soong inspected his safety line, then checked the telltales on the antigravs. The right battery pack showed bright green, but the left one was blinking yellow. He did a quick test, pushing off the cliff face, and felt a slight wobble. Not good, he thought. The batteries were supposed to drain evenly and keep him stable. Probably the cold, Soong decided. The packs hadn't been rated for sub-zero work.

  But I'm okay for now, he decided. All the more reason to get this over with quickly. He set the antigravs for full, then squeezed the release on the guide rope, and slowly eased off the antigrav. Pushing off the cliff with his toes, Soong expertly rappelled down about six meters, then stopped and set his feet, flipped the antigravs back up to full. Damn, he thought. These gloves are just not doing it. He checked the view between his legs, waiting for his lamp to stop swinging back and forth. Nothing unusual. The ledge should be only another five meters, maybe less. Wait. What's that? Something odd below, something pointing in the wrong direction.

  Soong tried to sidestep across the face of the ice to get a different angle, but the cliff face was too smooth. It would help immensely if I knew what the hell I was looking for, he thought disgustedly, but Vaslovik had been tight-lipped on this point. “You'll know it when you see it,” he'd said. “If you see it. For now, just concentrate on getting to the bottom of the chasm so we can set up the pattern enhancers. If we can do that, we can transport down the workstations, set up a shelter, get the sensors going and do some serious work. I'll be more surprised than not if you see anything on the way down.” It was, up to that point, the longest single speech Vaslovik had addressed to Soong and there was something about how the dour, silver-haired man spoke that made you take everything he said very, very personally. His eyes never left yours, though there was a definite temptation to try to let your own gaze slide away toward random objects. Listening to Vaslovik required willpower.

  “So, why not just transport directly to the bottom of the chasm?” he had considered asking, but hadn't. If that had been an option, he knew Vaslovik would have done it. Checking the ship's sensor logs, it became clear: there was something very peculiar about the place. The sensors—and they were very good sensors, despite their age—couldn't penetrate the interference around the area. Might be mineral deposits or low-level radiation, or . . . Something else. Soong tried not to think about that option too much. Whatever the case, transporting without enhancers would be extremely risky. “Not that this isn't risky,” he muttered to himself.

  “What was that, Soong?” Graves asked.

  “Nothing, Ira. Just catching my breath.”

  His attention was wandering again. Okay, Noonien, concentrate. Do the drill, just like Father taught you. Check your levels, antigravs up, squeeze the release, push . . . He pushed off and suddenly found himself with no support on the left side. The antigrav had failed. He released the pressure on the handgrip, hoping the autolock mechanism would stop his descent, but it was too late. He had already started sliding and tumbling.

  Soong released the autogrip and grabbed the rope, then flattened himself against the cliff face, toes digging in for purchase. He'd been in this situation once or twice before, just like anyone who climbed regularly. There was no avoiding it; equipment failed. The difference here was that on the other occasions there had been someone above him, someone more experienced, someone he knew and trusted—usually his father—watching to make sure the safety lines were fixed and secure. Graves began to shout, “Soong! Soong!” —almost making him lose his grip on the rock because of the need to tear out his earpiece.

  He felt a jolt as he cracked his knee on a rock. There was no pain, though he knew that would come if he survived the next couple of seconds. He could feel the bite of the cord as it slid through his gloves, but there was no sensation of his descent slowing. Cord must be wet, he decided.

  And, then, another shock—up through both legs this time—and a sensation that he imagined must be how icicles feel after they've lost their grip on the eaves of a building and shattered on the pavement below. All sensation dimmed down for a moment and Soong realized he was slipping into unconsciousness. No, no. Bad idea. Bad idea, he thought and willed himself back to awareness, and all the attendant discomfort. Everything below his waist was screaming at him and he saw a bright light. Has Ira already started climbing down? he wondered, but then realized he was staring into the lens of his lamp. It had broken loose and was lying on the ground . . . no, not the ground. A ledge.

  Fighting down panic, Soong gingerly felt to his side, searched for the edge of the precipice and found it. Maybe a meter wide where he was sitting, though it seemed to be wider to his left. It seemed stable, so Soong shifted his weight, then rolled off the handgrip that had been stabbing him in the side, and pulled himself up into a sitting position. His pants were shredded and there was a fair amount of blood smeared on the tatters, but he could move his legs so he knew they weren't broken. He pulled out the med pack, peeled an anesthetic dermpatch off the roll and applied it to his thigh. Soong was rewarded with almost instantaneous relief, the pain dropping down to a dull throb. A quick pass with the medical tricorder confirmed what he suspected—scrapes and some serious contusions, but nothing life-threatening. He set to work patching up the worst of it. Blood loss in such a cold place was a bad thing.

  Soong became aware of a distant buzzing sound, so he groped around until he found his earpiece. He tapped the comm link and said, “Graves? Ira? Please stop shouting. I fell, but I'm all right.” The buzz from the earpiece died away and was replaced by a dim murmur. Vaslovik was speaking.

  “Noonien? You're safe?”

  “For now, Dr. Vaslovik. I'm on a ledge maybe forty meters down. I'm hurt, but not critically. If you can wait a moment, I'm going to try to bandage myself up.”

  “All right, Noonien. Go ahead. If necessary, set up your pattern enhancer and we'll beam you back to my ship.” Soong felt some of his anxiety drain away; he would get out of this place one way or another, assuming the enhancer survived the fall. Soong began to unsling his pack to see if it was undamaged, but stopped himself. He only had a little time before the cold totally sapped his strength. Better to concentrate on the task at hand.

  Soong pulled the lamp closer and tried to set it down where he could use the light to inspect his legs, but the lantern wouldn't stay in an upright position. The ledge was bumpy and irregular, but Soong's attempts at finding a crack to wedge the lamp into were unsuccessful. Thinking he might chip out a small depression, Soong unslung his climbing hammer, took aim and swung. The hammer hit hard, but instead of the satisfying chink he had expected, all he got was a dull thud. He shone the light onto the ledge, then bent down to examine the spot where the hammer had struck. The surface of the rock was unscarred. He looked at his hammer and saw that the blade was dulled by the blow.

  What the hell . . . ?

  At first, he thought it was some kind of petrified plant root, but looking more closely he saw that it wasn't a plant at all. Later—much later—he realized that it was the fingers that had confused him. They were extraordinarily long, almost like they had been melted or softened, then stretched like taffy. The arm and the upper body, too, seemed freakishly elongated, but it was impossible to say much else about it since the lower half of the body seemed to be dangling off the other side of the ledge.

  Holding the lamp so he could keep an eye on the figure, Soong unslung his pack and began assembling the enhancer. As he worked, he tapped his comm link again and, as calmly as he could, said, “Dr. Vaslovik? Ira? On second thought, maybe you should come down here.”

  PART ONE

  Chapter One

  “ ‘It was a dark and stormy night. . .’ ”

  Commander Bruce Maddox wasn't sure he had heard correctly, so he hauled himself up out of the maintenance hatch and said, “Excuse me?” He had been looking for a loose connection or a mismatched isolinear chip, something to explain the power fluctuations, but there was no reason to believe that Emil w
as thinking about that, too. Maddox sometimes wondered if Emil had a loose connection somewhere or a mismatched . . . well, a mismatched something. Whatever mismatched thing it is that makes a genius into a genius. And as far as Maddox was concerned, there could be no doubt about it: Emil Vaslovik was a genius, albeit, occasionally, a very annoying genius.

  People had called Maddox a genius at various times in his career and he had always enjoyed it, but now, looking back, he wondered if sometimes they had been mentally inserting adjectives before they got to the noun. What might those adjectives have been? he wondered in a rare moment of introspection. But then he shook his head and the moment passed. Not relevant to the project, he decided and passed his tricorder over another set of connections. The word “relevant” featured very largely in Maddox's vocabulary, which was why Emil Vaslovik's habit of uttering non sequiturs was so galling to him.

  “I said, ‘It was a dark and stormy night.’ ”

  “I heard you the first time,” Maddox said, resting his back against the console. “But what does it mean?”

  “It doesn't mean anything,” Vaslovik said, more than a trace of amusement in his voice. “I was just looking out the window and watching the storm clouds gather. It made me think of the opening line to a novel called Paul Clifford. It's rather famous . . . well, infamous, actually.

  “ ‘It was a dark and stormy night,’ ” Vaslovik recited. “ ‘The rain fell in torrents—except at occasional intervals when it was checked by a violent gust of wind which swept up the streets (for it is in London that our scene lies), rattling along the housetops and fiercely agitating the scanty flame of the lamps that struggled against the darkness.’ ” He stopped and regarded Maddox, who had once again pushed himself up out of the console.