He turned again, as he stood in front of the Sawliru’s table, and faced the panel. “My fellow—Spartacans—and I are as that babe, Captain, Doctor, First Officer. We have just emerged from the womb. It’s true, we may know nothing of these ‘living’ things. But we cannot learn them if we are put to death,” he warned. “What we lack in experience, we make up for in potential. I’ve read your histories, Captain Picard. Your Federation prides itself on encouraging the potential it sees in other races. Its worst enemies have gone on to become close friends and allies. Don’t let our potential die here, in the void, Captain.” Jared was actually pleading—something, Picard guessed, that did not come easy to him. “Give us a place to stand and fight for ourselves, and the experience will come, as it does to every race, in time.” There was a long pause as his words sank in.
Suddenly, Picard felt a thousand years old. He realized that he had a long way to go to make up his mind.
“Are there any others who would speak on the matter? Anything else the petitioners wish to add?” he asked.
“Nothing,” Jared said, quietly, nervously fingering his right hand with his left. He looked beaten. But then, Picard noted, so did Sawliru.
“If there are no further statements,” he said, “I will consult with my fellow officers and attempt to make a decision. It is possible we will have more questions for everyone. We will reconvene in one hour,” he said to the audience and the recording computer. “Number One, Doctor, I wish to see you in my quarters, please.”
As the panel officers filed out of the room, Alkirg turned to Sawliru.
“Check on the fleet, get them ready. We may need to attack the Enterprise or the Conquest very shortly.” She smiled. “I just haven’t decided which one, yet.”
“But, Mission Commander—”
“Did I ask for an opinion?” she said in an acid tone, her eyes savagely boring into her subordinate’s. “I didn’t think so. Watch yourself, or it will go badly for you when we return to Vemla. Now be on your way, and let me think,” she said over her shoulder as she exited out into the corridor:
Sawliru choked back a bitter, caustic reply, and tried to calm himself. Either course of action at this point had no foreseeable conclusion save the death and destruction of his fleet. There was no wisdom in what she said, only folly. How would the historians rate him in this crisis, he wondered idly—if there were any survivors to take word back to Vemla at all, that was. He shook his head, deciding that it didn’t matter. He had enough to worry about; the flow of events would have to go on heedless of what he thought about posterity. He had better check on the fleet as soon as possible, though it was the first step into destruction. He didn’t need “insubordination in the face of the enemy” added to the list of charges at his posthumous court-martial.
He was about to contact his ship when he realized someone had come up silently behind him. Sawliru spun—and found himself staring at the Enterprise’s android officer, Commander Data.
“What do you want?” he challenged.
“I thought I might take the opportunity of the recess to offer you a drink, Commander,” Data said.
The invitation caught Sawliru completely off guard. He was about to spit out a bitter, derisive reply, but stopped. He was angrier with Alkirg than with the androids right now, and he knew that one way to get back at her for her abuse was to spurn her company for that of an android. Especially an alien android.
“Why, thank you, I would be delighted,” he said, tight-lipped but respectfully. “I could use a drink about now.”
“Excellent,” Data said as the door hissed open. “I know the perfect place.”
The three Starfleet officers reassembled in Picard’s private quarters, around the mahogany tea table the captain used for social occasions. A silver teapot, specially ordered from the galley, sat in the center, and the three sipped as they talked.
“What troubles me most about the androids is their attitude, Number One,” Picard said, as he poured more tea. “I must admit that their flawlessness makes me uncomfortable, and their pride, their . . . hubris, could very well get them into trouble, some day.”
“Hasn’t it already?” Riker asked, wryly. Picard nodded, conceding the point.
“What about Data?” asked Beverly. “Does his flawlessness make you uncomfortable, too?”
Picard seriously considered the question. No, Data was a valuable officer, and his misunderstanding of human values and customs even made him the endearing source of comic relief when he wasn’t being annoying. “No. Perhaps it’s the fact that they look and act nearly identical to human beings. I could pass one in the corridor and never know the difference. Data’s physical structure makes him—less human, less threatening,” he said, thoughtfully. “Dr. Soong planned it that way, apparently. It would have been easy enough to make him more human-like, in skin tone and eye color, if nothing else.”
“I think the point was that Dr. Soong didn’t intend for Data to replace man, but to complement him,” Riker said, quietly. “In all of his notes on the subject, he makes it clear that he was not looking to create the ultimate machine, but an amalgam of the best organic and mechanical quality.”
“Whereas the Vemlans had no such policy in their creation. Perhaps if they had, they would have also had a little foresight. But their whole intention was to replace man, at least in the drab and vital functions of a society.”
“I still haven’t been convinced that allowing the andr—Spartacans—to enter the Federation is a wise idea,” Riker said, frankly. “They are a very dangerous race, potentially.”
“If they are a race at all,” Picard countered. “I was deadly serious about the question of the Borg, Number One.”
“The Borg had biological components, at least; that makes it easier to place them in the race category,” Riker pointed out.
“Ah, but we’ve admitted that they are alive, Will,” Beverly said, as the food materialized in the slot. “Data’s sentience is a matter of record. But it takes more than life to make a race.”
“Does it?” Riker asked. “I still don’t see how the Borg are relevant.”
“The biological components of the Borg—some of them our former comrades—are mere arms and legs and synapses for the Borg gestalt. They possess little or no individuality,” Picard said as Beverly placed the tray on the table. “The Vemlans, at least, have that in their favor. They are individuals—Jared has more character than some humans I know. The driving program of the Borg is computer-generated, however. The biological components are locked into a machine-made program. What little will they have is dominated by the central gestalt. That I know for certain,” he said, with a certain amount of pain in his eyes.
“But is the program itself alive, and can the entire Borg complex be considered a race, or merely a machine that got out of control?” Beverly asked. “As Data pointed out, we really don’t have enough information to decide. The Borg attacked a little too quickly and savagely for us to trade histories.”
“And by the same token, are the androids motivated out of a sense of racial unity or are they merely using those terms to mask a programmed response? How can we know?” Riker asked.
“By observation, perhaps,” Picard said, sipping his tea. “Up to now, we have treated the Borg as a race because that is how they manifested themselves to us—as invaders. Not as some mindless doomsday machine. That is how we treat every race that communicates with us—even the Spartacans, until we learned of their origin. Yet can we honestly exclude them?”
“Can we honestly include them, Captain?” Riker said. “I am all for fairness in this matter, but we didn’t try to invite the Borg to join the Federation when they attacked—or a hundred other races we have encountered. They are just too different from us for the benefits of the Federation to mean anything.”
“I think,” Beverly commented as she poured more tea, “that Data was correct in one thing. In the cases of both the Borg and the Vemlans, we must reexamine our definitions a
nd preconceptions of what we consider a race. There is just too much that is strange to us, and therefore doesn’t fit into any convenient category. Whether we include them or exclude them, we must decide on what basis we do these things.”
“But can a race come off an assembly line?” Riker argued.
“Why not?” Beverly countered. “It’s at least a form of production I understand.”
“I think,” Picard said, slowly, “that we have been too conservative in definitions—depending too much on tradition. ‘There are more things in heaven and earth’ than are dreamt of in any of our philosophies. We cannot depend on our own narrow histories and viewpoints to judge the rest of the universe. As for the Borg and the Vemlans, I’m willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. I cannot, in good conscience, do otherwise.”
“That still doesn’t answer the question of whether or not they should be granted admission,” Riker said. “They are dangerous—immature, as Sawliru pointed out. And dangerous. By their own admission, they could take any worthless asteroid or planet and turn it into a paradise. And they are also adept at war, the worst kinds of war. They could also build weapons, expand, become deadly enemies. If we thought the Klingons or Romulans were bad, how could we beat a race that came from factories, fully grown, ready to fight? On the other hand . . . perhaps it would be better to have them on our side. After all—”
“That’s an attitude I’d expect Worf to voice, Number One, not you. They do make formidable opponents, from what Commander Sawliru has said—and by their own admission. Yet even in our midst, with high technology at their disposal, they could become dangerous in other ways. The safest way to deal with them would be the answer the Vemlans have pursued—destruction.”
“You would have them destroyed?” asked Riker, his face blank. He had not sanctioned that in his own mind.
“Beverly has convinced me that they are, indeed, living, sentient creatures. To destroy them would be genocide, and I will not make a decision at that level if I can humanly avoid it,” he said, his face heavy with worry. “No, I said it was the safest thing; it will not be our course of action.”
“We’ve dealt with dangerous aliens before,” Beverly said. “Some of them, as Jared pointed out, are living in peace with us now. I don’t think these androids are a threat in that way. I think they pose a more insidious problem.”
“What?” asked Picard, pouring tea.
“What happens if they want to join Starfleet?” she asked, eyes wide at the prospect. “What happens when you have to compete with one of these wonder machines, these supermen, for a chance to command, Jean-Luc? There’s no way you could win.”
“I think you underestimate my abilities, Doctor,” Picard said with a trace of pique.
“I think you underestimate theirs, Captain,” she insisted. “As much as I detest the military mind, Sawliru had some very good points out there. The only advantage we have over them is experience, and it won’t be long before they have that, too. Would the Neanderthals,” she thought, fancifully, “have let the Cro-Magnons hang around if they knew what was in store for them? I wonder . . .”
“Our race and culture will be tried by many things, Dr. Crusher. We shouldn’t try to eliminate the competition unfairly. If we fail, then we shall fail fairly.”
“What concerns me the most is their criminal past,” Riker said. “Here is this ship full of terrorists who want to join the Federation. How do we explain that to Starfleet Command?”
“Terrorism is a relative thing, Will,” Picard said smoothly. “They were fighting for their freedom and were, in their own eyes, justified. I am not equipped to judge them in that. We’ve had criminals in our past. Half of the Jenisha in the Federation are descended from families who made their fortunes preying on Federation ships at the height of their pirate era. The Federation exists to bring disparate groups together peacefully, not to serve as a high moral ground.”
“And the matter of species survival is also important,” Beverly said. “The Spartacans are the last of their race. Even though they have committed crimes—and even atrocities—as individuals, what right do we have to condemn their race to extinction? Would you want our own race to be judged like that?”
“I don’t think that humanity would ever come to that, Doctor,” Riker said, a trifle forcefully.
“Oh, really?” Crusher said, accusingly. “Remember your history, Will. During the Eugenics Wars, on Earth, humanity very well could have been wiped out. In fact it was a miracle that it wasn’t. Every man, woman, and child in the race would have been gone. Except for a few ships that got away.”
“The prison ships, you mean,” Picard said. “They contained—”
“They contained hundreds of desperate, violent criminals, pathological murderers, and genetically altered, psychotic terrorists, considered war criminals by the rest of the world,” Riker finished.
“Yes, and they were mostly justified in their imprisonment. Those ships were filled with the dregs of humanity, people whose crimes earned them a deathless imprisonment, until they were lost. Tell me, Jean-Luc, if these violent, psychotic terrorists were the only survivors of Earth, would you put them on trial, condemn and execute them for their war crimes? Thus exterminating the human race?”
Picard frowned and closed his eyes. “I am an explorer, not a judge, Beverly.”
“Not today, Jean-Luc.” She leaned back in her chair and looked straight at him. “Today, you have a decision to make.”
Picard sighed. He did, indeed.
Chapter Eleven
SAWLIRU NODDED IN appreciation as a filled glass materialized in the tiny chamber in front of Data. The technology of the Federation was nearly magical to him. With such machines, it was no wonder that these people had achieved so much.
Abruptly, he caught himself. Here I stand, in the presence of one of those machines, and gawk and stare like some uncivilized barbarian. He strengthened his resolve to behave with more care and dignity. Data, who didn’t seem to notice, handed him the drink and turned to program his own beverage.
The drink was pleasantly chilled and had a sweet odor and a tangy, refreshing taste. He would be hard-pressed to find one as expertly mixed in his own officer’s lounge on his own ship. Not, at least, since it no longer employed an android. Somehow the realization angered him.
“The Enterprise has many highly interesting technologies incorporated into her design,” the pale android was saying. “I thought that it might be of interest to demonstrate one for you.”
“This food dispenser?” Sawliru asked. “Yes, it is quite an achievement. A combination of that transporter beam and a computer, is it not? Had we the transporter technology, doubtless we could find such a device useful.”
“The food slots are, indeed, of special interest to visitors,” the machine said, sipping its drink in gross parody of a real man. “Yet I was speaking of something else entirely.”
He turned toward a blank wall panel and placed an inhuman, ghostly white hand upon it. “Computer: Activate holodeck three.”
“Program?” the female voice of the computer inquired.
“Theta four six, authorization code—Commander Data.”
“Working . . . Complete. Enjoy your recreation program, Commander.”
“Thank you, I shall.”
Sawliru grinned wryly, in his tight-lipped fashion. “You thanked the computer? Are you two good friends?”
“The holodeck computer is classified nonsentient. Its salutation is simply programmed politeness—user-friendliness. I made the response as a reflex; I have learned that politeness and manners, when practiced universally, alter the behavior of both the practitioner and the recipient in a favorable manner. In essence, if you are polite to everyone, then people are more inclined to be polite to you. In addition, the computer has a memory of each exchange, and if some semblance of sentience exists, I would prefer to be on good terms with it. It is a very smart machine.”
“Sort of a master-pet relationship
.”
Data considered the suggestion. “That is an analogy I had not considered. From what I have read and seen of such relationships, the situation is somewhat similar.”
He turned and walked toward the door, which obligingly slid open with an automatic hiss that disconcerted Sawliru. Doors that didn’t work manually might be elegant, but he didn’t trust them. The android strode forward. Sawliru wondered absently about what would have happened had the door not opened. He followed, drink in hand, to see this technological marvel.
As he crossed the plane of the door, he stepped into another world. A deserted wasteland.
Twisted trees of an alien variety dotted the rolling hills, and scrub grasses and thornbushes pushed gratingly skyward. The sun, a bright, alien, yellow thing, filled the sky. Through the center of the landscape, an ancient brick road, thick with dust, ran to an equally primitive town in the distance. Sawliru’s senses struggled to adjust to the abrupt change; confound it, had those Federation clowns perfected their transporter beams to cover interstellar distances? Had this machine-man brought him to some faraway land to be murdered or imprisoned, effectively incapacitating his command?
“Do not be alarmed,” said the android, reading the expression on his face. “We have not left the ship. Look through the door behind you.”
He did. The quiet, humming corridor of the starship was plainly visible, hanging, seemingly, in midair. A crewman wandered by, glanced at the open door, and continued. Sawliru took a deep breath, and let the panic slip from his mind.
The android continued its explanation as the door to the ship closed, to be replaced by a bush.
“The holodeck was specially designed for deepspace starships, which might be between safe shore leave sites for months, and might be away from home ports for years at a time. By using both three-dimensional holograms, forcefield generators, and the transporter technology, we can effectively re-create any environment, any situation, without limit to time and space. Though it was intended primarily for recreation, the holodeck has also been used as a means of education as well. I have stood in the ancient past of my creator’s planet, been involved in a tavern brawl in San Francisco, debated philosophy with the greatest thinkers in the galaxy, and wandered through the forests of a hundred worlds without leaving the ship. The holodeck computer controls the situation and acts upon the reactions of the participants.”
SPARTACUS Page 20
