SPARTACUS

by T. L. MANCOUR

  Jared’s voice grew stronger. “We had no masters save ourselves. But we could not remain free forever unless we forced the government to reason with us. I sent half of my people into the city to spread the word among the android population, and with the other half I began a series of disruptions. No one was hurt, at first, but when they began killing our people wholesale—and yes, by that time we were a people—I vowed that a human would die for every one of us that was destroyed.”

  His eyes flashed in heated memory at the mention of violence. Picard became uncomfortable once again—Jared seemed to enjoy recounting his attacks. “We raided the Games, the arenas, where we stole weapons and freed our harshly sentenced comrades. The condemned knew how to fight already, having been programmed as I was. The rest had to learn.

  “I led many of the raids myself. Like the raid on the steps of the Great Assembly building,” he said, nodding toward the screen that still held his motionless image. “We spread our message by channels unknown to the . . . humans. By the second year of our rebellion, we had agents everywhere, even on the orbiting satellite stations. We bombed reprogramming facilities and, yes, we assassinated the key figures that opposed us. It was a war and we were warriors. It could be said that we were ruthless, and I would not deny it. But we were not without mercy, and we spared those whom we could. For a time, we became heroes to the masses of Vemlans, though this image was destroyed by the government’s propaganda campaign. It was only a matter of time before the government declared that all androids, regardless of their actions and beliefs, should be destroyed. It was they who declared genocide on our people first. We never accepted it as a policy.”

  “You were terrorists!” shouted Alkirg, unable to contain herself any longer.

  “Terrorists are what the big army calls the little army,” Kurta shot back.

  “Whatever we were,” Jared continued, “when I realized that we could never live peacefully on Vemla, I decided to lead my people away. A few of us stayed to provide a distraction, and while the governmental forces destroyed the few who had sacrificed themselves, the rest of us stole away on the Conquest. We renamed her the Freedom, to honor the ideal for which we fought so hard.”

  Alkirg was on her feet at once, applauding sarcastically. “Well done, Unit Jared. Very well done. Your command of dramatic fiction is excellent. But you will still be destroyed.”

  “You deny Jared’s story?” asked Picard.

  “I will deny any story in which an android claims to have complex emotional motivations,” she replied, haughtily. “Captain, how can you expect me to take seriously the idea that a construction of wires and circuits can feel love and hate that way? Jared is malfunctioning. It has happened before. It’s just unfortunate that his problem had to progress so far and hurt so many people before it could be countered.’’

  “You cannot reprogram life,” said Kurta flatly.

  “It doesn’t matter, Unit Kurta. Because you both have been scheduled for trial and destruction before the Great Assembly for crimes against the state. There are millions back on Vemla who would like to have words with you about their husbands and wives that died at Trengard and Gemlouv and the satellite stations, not to mention the next of kin of the thousands you killed in bombings and raids before that. Whether you are alive is a moot point; soon you will cease to be in any state.”

  “Enslavement is no longer a crime, then?” asked Jared. “If it still is, then your entire race must go on trial. How about mass murder? And conspiracy to commit murder?”

  “It is no crime to destroy a machine. And only another being can be enslaved. These are not crimes to the Vemlan people,” Alkirg responded angrily.

  “They are crimes against everything you teach your children!” Jared exclaimed loudly.

  “It is not we who are on trial here, Unit Jared. It is not we who waged war on a peaceful people. It is not we who incinerated millions of guiltless innocents to prove a point.”

  “Innocents?” Jared asked, caustically. “There were few innocents. If they abused an android or watched those barbaric games, then they weren’t innocent, Alkirg,” Jared snapped. “We came to you in peace, looking for a peaceful solution, and you killed our leaders and laughed at our desires. We wanted freedom, and you gave us death and destruction.”

  “Enough!” Picard said, raising his hands to stop the argument. “There will be order in here! I will not have this conference turned into a mindless squabble.” He paused a few moments, letting the adversaries sink back to their chairs. With a motion, he disengaged the viewscreen, causing Jared’s picture to fade away. He examined each face before he continued. “Jared, you seem to have made the transition to open armed rebellion with little regard to the consequences. Was there no other way?” he asked.

  The android leader shook his head. “Captain, I examined all sides of the issue, plotted all the probabilities. I am, as Alkirg has pointed out, a machine. I looked at all the historical texts and realized that there was virtually no chance that a peaceful solution could be found. Vemla needed the androids to maintain her wealth, to keep the people happy. There was no way that the assembly would deal fairly with us as long as its power rested on our labor. No doubt, it still does. Despite the ferocity of the wars, the government still controls the automated factory that creates our brains, and has thousands of androids stockpiled, dormant. They will no doubt wait for the present furor to subside, and then bring those poor unfortunates to life to rebuild. Then there will be yet more slaves to build their Golden Age upon.”

  “There are no more of you,” Alkirg said. “Every Alpha and Beta unit was destroyed before we left Vemla—even those in vital areas. We took no chances. Gamma units were reprogrammed with null personality functions. They make good field hands and mine workers, nothing more.”

  Jared sat down heavily, stunned at the admission.

  Picard empathized. To destroy out of hand an entire race of beings as vital as Jared and his crew shocked him. Perhaps the objective status the Vemlans had about their creations could justify it in their minds, but he could not see their point. He stared at Alkirg for a moment, imagining her giving the orders for their destruction. Yes, he could see her doing it; she had the dangerous and imperious manner that Caesar must have had, that of a killer. Killers on both sides, with alleged crimes to match, made this arbitration that much more difficult for him to judge.

  “We feared you would do as much,” said Kurta, bitterly. “And now you would do the same to us.”

  “Instantly,” replied the mission commander icily, her dark, pencil-thin eyebrows slanting to emphasize the word. “You have caused far too much destruction to remain intact.”

  “There you have it, Captain,” said Jared with an air of resignation. “Our last and best reason. We are fighting for our very survival. There can be no peace with these . . . people.”

  Picard rubbed his tired brow with one hand. “I have listened carefully to both sides here, and I honestly don’t know what to say. Jared, you and your people are self-confessed killers. You have committed heinous crimes in the name of an abstract ideal. We, in the Federation, have tried to civilize ourselves beyond that point. Yet you did try to negotiate first, and were rejected,” he admitted.

  “Your government,” he said to Alkirg, who was glowering in her seat, “has instilled in these . . . beings a mistrust and violence that has caused you much damage. And now you pursue them to punish them. Can you not leave well enough alone?”

  “It is not just I who have decided this, Captain Picard,” Alkirg said plainly. “It is the will of our government, of all our people. There will be no peace as long as Unit Jared and its compatriots live.”

  He turned to look at the simple, comforting stars. They seemed so innocent, so unsullied of man’s petty squabbles. “My ship seems to be the crucial factor in this situation. You both seek an answer to your problems. If you will not negotiate, then I have none to give right now.” He turned back to his guests. “Please go back to your ow
n ships and allow me to ponder this matter for a while.”

  He rose, and the others followed suit. Alkirg firmly shook his hand and smiled, with a trace of insincerity. “Captain, I’m certain you will find the truth in your living, human heart and act justly,” she said, and exited. Force Commander Sawliru made a small gesture of thanks to the captain and walked deferentially behind her.

  Jared shook Picard’s hand as well, after his adversaries had left. “I’m sorry we did not trust you with the truth immediately, Captain. But our actions seemed best to us—at the time,” he said, simply.

  “Thank you for your patience, Captain Picard,” added Kurta. “If nothing else, you’ve given us a few hours we wouldn’t ordinarily have had.” Then the androids, too, left.

  Picard took his seat again and looked tiredly at Deanna. “I don’t suppose you have any words of wisdom for me, Counselor?” he asked, wryly.

  She shook her head. “I can’t tell you anything you don’t already know, sir. I don’t see a clear way out of the situation. I think you’re going to have a rough time.”

  Picard gave his adviser a sour look. “Thank you for the advice, Counselor.” He sighed. “The sad part is, you’re absolutely right.”

  While the captain of the Enterprise listened to somber speeches and hurled accusations, his second officer was enjoying something he had rarely had, an intriguing conversation with someone who was his intellectual peer. Maran, the librarian of the Freedom, had asked to meet with Data to discuss and compare the different cultures of the Federation for her files.

  He had been eager to talk with one of the Vemlan androids on a one-to-one basis, and was particularly pleased that it was Maran who had found the time to see him. He was strangely attracted to her; of all the crew of the Freedom he had met so far, he felt that she was a kindred soul. Maran, like himself, had an overwhelming desire—bordering on obsession—to accumulate and understand every sort of information.

  Once he was asked, Data did not hesitate to make the necessary arrangements, including gaining permission from the first officer.

  Data met Maran in the transporter room. Much to his surprise, she was not dressed in the tan uniform the Vemlans seemed to prefer for shipboard business. She was wearing an electric blue garment that resembled a Japanese kimono, and she had swept her hair to one side, so that her striking eyes were visible for the first time. She looked, by all the admittedly puzzling human standards Data had absorbed, exceptionally pretty.

  “Data, I’m very pleased you agreed to see me. I’m looking forward to this discussion,” she said.

  “As am I,” he replied. “I have many questions to ask and answer, and I considered that a mutual exchange of information would be beneficial to both myself and your people. Though a conference or other means of data exchange might have been more appropriate, I have been advised that some information is best transmitted in an informal setting.”

  “Lead on,” Maran said, smiling.

  Data had chosen Ten-Forward, the lounge and recreation area that many of the Enterprise crew frequented when off-duty, at Geordi’s suggestion. When the chief engineer heard about his friend’s rendezvous, he had freely rendered advice. Though his Academy training and several years of Starfleet service had given him some experience in such things, Data was not used to purely social matters outside the occasional informal gatherings of friends, and appreciated the help.

  The lounge was unusually quiet, and the two of them had little trouble finding a seat. Guinan, the dark-skinned alien hostess who usually presided over Ten-Forward, appeared almost instantly with two long, thin glasses in hand. She produced a green bottle from behind the bar and opened it. Maran was interested by the sonic disturbance that accompanied the action, and inquired if it had some cultural or religious significance.

  “No,” Data answered. “The beverage in question is known as champagne, a drink made from the specialized fermentation of berries grown in the Champagne, New York, and California regions of Earth. Humans use the drink as a means of celebration on special occasions. The small explosion is caused by the sudden release of gasses held under pressure. The gasses are caused by the continued fermentation process. Champagne is prized for the refreshing bubbles it produces.”

  “Interesting,” Maran commented. Guinan gave Data a sour look while she poured the champagne.

  “Data, I know that you haven’t gotten the hang of romance—I still reel when I think about the last time you tried to learn it—let me fill you in on a few things; when you take a pretty woman out to a nice place—and this is the nicest place in light-years—with dim lighting, soft music, and champagne, you don’t discuss exciting chemical processes and interesting cultural significance,” she said, reprovingly.

  “My eyes automatically adapt to the lighting conditions here, Guinan,” he replied. “And I do not perceive that there is music playing.”

  Guinan smiled brightly as she filled the second glass. “Now that can be arranged. I thought you’d never ask.” She looked up at a comm panel above the table. “Computer, musical selection seventy-one, please.” There was a few seconds pause, and then the space around the table was filled with delicate, exotic-sounding music. “There,” the hostess said, satisfied. “That should do. I’ll leave you two alone now. Enjoy.”

  As she walked back to her station behind the bar, Maran glanced at her companion. “She’s very interesting, Data. But something puzzles me. Why employ a bartender on a military ship?”

  “The Enterprise is not a military vessel. We are on a mission of exploration that may keep us away from planetfall for years. Since the crew is made up primarily of organic life-forms with little or no control over their mental processes, it is considered beneficial by Starfleet that some provision for recreation be made to alleviate any undesirable mental problems resulting from mission-related stress. The holodeck and Ten-Forward were established as part of the ship’s complement for this reason.”

  While Data was in the middle of his explanation, Maran took a sip of her drink and raised her eyebrows. “Very good. The bubbles . . . are stimulating.”

  “That is interesting,” replied Data. “There are many ways in which you mimic humanoid sensations, Maran. I was quite surprised to find a chef on your ship. Presumably, as androids, you have no need of organic sustenance.”

  “That’s true,” she admitted. “I guess we have them for the same reason that your ship has this lounge. Though we can continue working indefinitely, we are not always the most efficient when we do so. We need to relax. I like to read. Kurta has her garden. Porupt finds his relaxation in cooking. Many others find it in eating. Or a thousand other things. Chalk it up to sophisticated engineering; our designers wished to create a race of all-purpose androids that could fully interact with the organic Vemlan population. That meant programming organic tastes and appreciations. And frailties. Including gender. I could theoretically insert my consciousness into the body of a male android, but my consciousness is female and would remain so. Sure, we don’t need to eat, or exercise, or create art, but we’re happier when we do so. Our construction is durable enough to even allow limited existence in vacuum and hostile environments. But that doesn’t mean that’s where we’d rather be. That’s what freedom is all about.”

  For the next half-hour, Maran told the tale of her people in the simple, matter-of-fact manner of a historian. It was different from the emotionally charged account that Jared was making nine decks up, but the salient points were the same. She finished, as the android revolutionary had, with the rescue of the Freedom by the Enterprise.

  “Remarkable,” Data said after she finished. “A constructed race as complex as its creators. Though I am a very advanced combination of hard, firm, and software, it is debatable whether I am as complex as humanity. I can appreciate your position. Is that why the last three hundred years were missing from the historical text you sent over?”

  “Yes. We were concerned that your ship, being peopled with organic entities, woul
d attempt to return us to our homeworld. Or worse.”

  “The Federation has very explicit laws regarding slavery. There are several legal constraints that must be followed when dealing with alien races.”

  “Your Prime Directive; it was mentioned repeatedly in the texts. I can see where severe moral dilemmas might arise from such a code, however. How do you handle that?”

  “On a case-by-case basis,” supplied Data. “It has been seen by most scholars as an exemplary system of relations, but there have admittedly been problems. Such as the issue of slavery.

  “Your own account is reminiscent of the story of the Jenisha race. Their ancestors were taken from their homeworld by a number of different races and used as slaves for ten thousand years. They became independent in a series of rebellions, revolutions, and wars that shaped modern Jenisha society. Until the Federation made it illegal, however, the Jenisha participated in both slavery and piracy. Almost all of the Jenisha worlds are members of the Federation now, and have accepted the antienslavement laws.”

  “The difference between the situations is that we didn’t wait ten thousand years to free ourselves,” said Maran. There was a touch of tension in her voice. “We also had a single movement. The Jenisha rebellions came under a number of guises. No, our bid for freedom resembles other cases, such as Tishrally of the Tesret or Spartacus of Rome. It happened, almost literally, overnight. And we almost won.”

  “Really? I understood that your forces were beaten soundly.”

  “Not really,” Maran disagreed. “We had a good chance of winning, had we stayed, but it would have taken much more slaughter and an almost total subjugation of the organic population. We decided that they did not want that much blood on our hands. We left, instead of starting a true holocaust.”