Watching the Sunset

An ST:TNG fic by Princess Artemis

The solitary light of one reddish star tiredly lit up the faces of the one planetoid and the few remaining asteroids. Other than that, no star shone. There were no other stars to shine. Blackness enveloped the sky, dark, thick, and utterly void. He looked out, away from the dying star a moment. He had become used to the emptiness, the absence of life and light. He contemplated his immortality, how it had left him to this empty, dying universe, how it had left all those that went before him with a measure of endlessness through him. How immortality blessed him then cursed him, allowing him to witness and participate in wonderful things, only to see those things pass away forever. This always happened in that order and in every situation. Except perhaps once, he thought to himself, and that is enough. He turned to face the star again. He stared at the last setting sun for an hour, watching it dim, watching it burn itself out. There remained only a few more hours of light in that star. He wondered about his fate for a moment. Would he expire with the universe, or would he continue? Surely physical immortality must end with the physical universe. Even so, he could not answer his question, so he would wait. He turned his thoughts back to one course of events, perhaps the most horrible and the most wonderful of all events in his extraordinary life. Trillions of years separated him from those memories, but he remembered them so well that he nearly re-experienced them. It is time to go back. I do not want to, but I must...

Just as he resolved that to himself, brilliant light flashed next to him. Even though he had lived for centuries in the near-absolute dark, the flash did not cause him an instant of discomfort. He looked to the being in human form that had just joined him. He wore an ancient red Starfleet uniform complete with captain’s pips. "Q, you cannot stay here, you know it is dangerous." There was no atmosphere, but the spoken words carried anyway.

Q sized up his pale companion, looking at the tatters of ancient cloth that covered him, then the disintegrating planetoid he sat on. "I love what you’ve done with the place," Q noted sarcastically, "and I’d think you might appreciate some company. You don’t need to be rude, Data."

Data stood in one fluid motion, "I was not rude. I simply stated a fact. Anyway, it was you who made a disparaging remark concerning the state of my ‘place.’"

Q crossed his arms in front of him and rolled his eyes. "Hmmph."

"I do appreciate the company. However, I do not wish you to be harmed by the fast decay of this universe. Please, go back to the Continuum."

Q looked at Data for a few moments. "I want to take you out of this place, to make you Q. I know you’re holding yourself together by sheer will, and you can’t keep it up forever. I want to pay my debt."

"Pay your debt," Data’s intonation clearly indicated his belief that that was not why Q had made the offer. He added, "You do not owe me anything."

Q glared at Data for a moment, then sighed. Q honestly liked Data. That Data had saved his life probably precipitated his fondness for the Android, but in the end, it was more than that. Maybe it was his humility, or his deference, or that he had something of a sense of the dramatic, but Q didn’t really want to think about what it was that had him going soft over the created machine of a lowly, insect race. (Q could barely bring himself to admit he liked that race.) Q spoke again, without his characteristic haughtiness, "Come back with me to the Continuum." Q paused a moment, then added, "I’m sure you’d enjoy exploring it."

Data considered for a moment. He was touched by Q’s offer, and it was tempting in the extreme, but he knew that he could not accept, not yet and maybe never. "I am sorry, Q. I have something I must do, back on the Enterprise. When I return, then perhaps I will accept your kind offer."

Q stood there for another moment, and then he smiled, indulging in one brief but gleeful fantasy concerning the indignation Data could cause back on the Enterprise if he had half a mind to. Then Q sighed. What ever it was that Data had to do, it was probably serious. Data just was not the type to entertain himself by wreaking havoc on Jean-Luc and his crew. Such a pity, he would be so good at it. Then, with mischievous enthusiasm Q announced, "If you ever tell Jean-Luc the secret of the universe, you’ve got to let me know when so I can relish the look on his face! Oh, mon capitaine, how you would choke on your Earl Gray!"

Mild amusement played out on Data’s face. "Q, I will certainly invite you to witness it if I do reveal that secret." Data looked at the star again, gold eyes reflecting the red light, his expression changing, reflecting ancient grief. No, grief was not the right word, but it was the only word. Softly, he said, "I do not want to do this...but I cannot do otherwise." He turned away from the star, and as he did he disappeared without warning or visible sign. Q started, then peered at the space Data had so unceremoniously deserted. Only his footprints remained. Q briefly thought of following Data to find out what he was up to, then decided against it. Q looked out at the star. He wondered what Data saw in it. He shrugged, then disappeared in his customary flash of light.

* * *

"First Officer’s Log, Stardate 47995.1: We have recently discovered an unusual star system in the Keleian sector. According to stellar physics, the star Keleia Sigma is orbited by two planets. They are on opposite sides of the same orbit. We are en route to investigate, traveling at warp 5. Captain Picard has allowed extra recreation time, as it will take us at least three days to reach the Keleia Sigma system."

"Personal Log, William T. Riker: Why did I get stuck with all the bridge duty? It is unfair that Picard gets to romp around on the holodeck for three days while I’m stuck on the bridge. On top of it, Deanna won’t even give me the day off. My Imzadi can be so cruel. She can take the bridge; why won’t she? Oh well. There’s a poker game tonight, and I’m going in with guns blazing."

* * *

Captain Jean-Luc Picard strolled up to the holodeck doors. He carried his English saddle and wore classic horse riding attire. Smiling, he pecked the controls for the holodeck, instructing it to conjure up a forest and place to run his horse. He stepped over to the holodeck doors, which obediently opened with their characteristic sigh. He stepped in, breathing the clean, crisp air. The scent of pine hung in the atmosphere. The doors closed behind him, soon hidden by forest. He walked over to the post that would shortly have a horse tied to it. "Computer. One Arabian horse, English tack, please." With an audible swish, a magnificent Arabian stood before Picard. He gazed at the horse, appreciating its striking beauty. As he took a few steps toward it, he noticed the horse looking intently at him. He patted its nose, then moved to place the saddle on its back. Much to Picard’s surprise, the horse sidestepped. Picard looked at the horse another moment, then moved to place the saddle again. Again, the horse sidestepped, more aggressively this time. Picard, with determination etched on his face, again tried to saddle the horse. This time, the horse trotted out of the way then lowered itself enough that Picard could mount it without much trouble. Picard stared at the horse, wondering why the holodeck computer would choose to display a horse with an obvious dislike of saddles. He walked over to the horse, thinking. He decided that he wouldn’t mind riding bareback, but he would have to ask Lieutenant Barcley about the holodeck’s initiative later. He mounted the horse, which then stood to its full height. Just then, he realized that the holodeck had not provided him with any tack, including reigns! He pondered his concern over the holodeck for a moment, then, with the same disregard he fell victim to time and again concerning the holodeck, he decided the problem was probably minor and that he would get it fixed after he rode for awhile. Curling his fingers into the horse’s gray mane, he gently spurred the horse to a light trot.

Commander William T. Riker could not believe it. His friends, his supposed friends, were cleaning him out! He glared over his busted flush at Counselor Deanna Troi, who at the moment gleefully raked in her winnings. He mentally growled at her.

Quiet enveloped the darkened room. Five players sat intently around a green felt table, the single over head light casting shadows upon their faces. Riker examined each of his opponents with a critical eye. Lieutenant Worf, with his heavy Klingon brows, deep set eyes, and slouching back, grumbled in Troi’s direction. He had very few chips in front of him; this was not one of those friends who had called every single one of Riker’s bluffs on this luckless night. Next, he glowered at Lt. Commander Geordi LaForge. Geordi just sat there, leaning back a little. Then he turned and looked at Riker’s diminishing pile of chips and his full lips twitched in a just controlled smirk. Geordi had a sizable amount of chips before him, many taken in conquest from Riker’s pile. Riker threw mental curses at Geordi as he turned to glare at Lt. Commander Data. Data, in his ever-present green visor, carefully stacked his mountain of chips. The Android had called four of Riker’s bluffs and adding insult to injury, had bluffed him twice. Data’s golden eyes flicked up from his stacking only long enough to register Riker’s unpleasant look. Riker huffed a bit, then turned his attention to Deanna Troi. He knew she was behind this amazing losing streak. His suspicions rose when he remembered that she, Geordi, and Data had all walked into his quarters at the same time, Troi leading. All of them wore decidedly mischievous looks, even the normally expressionless Data. Worf had growled when he saw them come in; apparently he smelled dishonorable intent. Riker couldn’t blame him, especially after how the game progressed. Riker lobbed venomous thoughts at Troi, knowing she would sense them with her empathic ability. She glanced up with a fiendish smile, her huge black eyes aglow with mirth. She contentedly returned to counting her chips.

"Worf, do you smell a rat?" Riker asked, his distinctive voice full of significance. He looked pointedly at Troi.

Worf turned his gaze from Troi’s chips to her face. "Yes," he rumbled. Geordi could barely control another grin. He then leaned over to make some idle conversation about a musical piece Data had been working on. Riker shot a quick glance at LaForge. Three rats.

Troi looked up, her voice full of mock innocence. "Why are you looking at me? It’s not my fault you two aren’t doing well."

Riker leaned sideways in his chair, looking steadily at her. "I think it is."

Troi glanced at Geordi and Data. They both glanced back; Geordi’s grin widened, exposing teeth. Troi sighed dramatically. Then she revealed the conspiracy. "I decided that it was time we played no-holds-barred. You get to play with all your native abilities, so I thought that we should too." This confession elicited an amused gleam from Worf’s eye; finally, Riker had been soundly beat in poker by opponents that could easily take on the best card sharks and reduce them to helpless tears. He wasn’t quite amused enough for his lips to twitch, however. After all, Riker wasn’t the only one who had lost chips to the conspirators.

Now it was obvious that Riker was being teased by the lovely Counselor, and probably by LaForge and Data too. After he realized this, he took the nettling with his characteristic humor. But he wasn’t about to let them off easy!

Grinning, Geordi added, "Don’t you remember I’ve got humans pegged? I can see when you’re bluffing Commander!" The low light hit his sight-giving VISOR just so, giving the impression of a mischievous glint.

Riker glared at Deanna and Geordi for a moment. He hadn’t thought that Geordi ignored what he saw to even out the odds. He turned to glare at Data, then grumped, "Well?"

Data gazed intently at Riker. He explained in his matter-of-fact tone, "If you are asking how I was able to see through your bluffs so easily, the answer is that I can see when you are bluffing by your ‘tells’, galvanic skin responses, and other tell-tales of your sympathetic nervous system. Also, I have a degree in probability mechanics, in case you had forgotten." He reshuffled the cards, then, in a blatant display of manual dexterity, cut the deck in one smooth motion and with one hand. "I also stacked the deck."

"You what?!" Riker exclaimed incredulously. He turned to gape at Troi. It amazed Riker that she could cajole Data into cheating, especially if it was all just to tease a certain First Officer. That explains why he has most of the chips, though...

Worf growled menacingly at Data. He disliked in the extreme having been cheated. Data had apparently anticipated Worf’s reaction, as he silently slid over enough of his own chips to make up for all that Worf had lost, without further provocation. Worf grumbled, somewhat satisfied.

Riker saw the exchange, then he raised his eyebrows at Data. Data paused for a moment, cocked his head, then separated out enough chips to cover only what Riker had lost to him. He passed them to Riker. "Why, thank you," Riker said while graciously accepting the proffered chips. He turned to look pointedly at LaForge.

"Not a chance, buddy! I won these fair and square," Geordi exclaimed good naturedly, while putting his arms protectively around his chips.

Riker accepted that, even though technically Geordi probably won from Data’s cheating. He moved to gaze at Troi. He knew she had cheated with her empathy; there would be no ‘fair and square’ excuses here. Troi sat up, squaring her shoulders. She then asked sweetly, "Have you learned your lesson, Will?"

"My lesson? Yeah, never play poker against a Betazoid with a mean streak! What do--" Riker was interrupted by a hail from Lieutenant DeSora. Riker shot one last look at Troi, then answered the hail, "Riker here, what is it?"

"Scanners have detected a ship at extreme sensor range. It seems to be shadowing us, sir. I tried to contact Captain Picard, but he didn’t answer," DeSora explained.

"All right Lieutenant. Go to Yellow Alert. I’ll be right up. Riker out." Riker wiped his beard, then he rose from his chair and turned his head to address the air, "Computer, locate Captain Picard"

The computer responded in its mild feminine voice, "Captain Picard is in Holodeck 3."

Riker nodded, then turned to those standing about him. "Worf, go find Captain Picard. The rest of you with me." The officers stood then filed out of Riker’s quarters, abandoning the game, forgotten in the face of duty and possible danger.

The wind whipped by him as he clung to the gray mane of this magnificent steed. Picard had never ridden a horse more agile, more fearless. The horse took each step surely, as if it had days to ponder each movement, yet it moved faster than any other horse. Mearas, thought Picard reverently, in reference to the noble beasts that were no mere horses in Tolkien fiction. Picard reveled in the speed, the whistle in his ears, the sound of hoof beats. The Arabian deftly leapt a small bubbling creek, landing nimbly on the opposite bank. After a few more exhilarating moments of speed, Picard pulled lightly on the great horse’s mane, instructing it to stop. Breathing hard, Picard wiped a small bead of sweat off his brow. It was just about time to turn back. The horse turned its head back, almost in a gesture of impatience. Picard could see that this horse loved the speed as much as he did. He smiled, then patted the horse’s neck. "Just a minute, then we’ll turn back."

The horse just looked at him. Mild, pondering.

Something about the horse’s level gaze brought Picard’s thoughts to sudden attention. He looked into the eyes of the horse and what he saw shocked him. The horse’s dark eyes held an intelligence that should not have been there. These were the eyes of a being that let nothing slip its attention. This seriously concerned Picard. "Computer, end program," he snapped.

The horse blinked once, then turned to face forward. Obviously the computer had failed to input Picard’s instruction. As the horse broke into a sudden gallop, Picard seized its mane. He barely managed to stay mounted as the horse accelerated to speeds well above those any horse, even Mearas, were capable of. "Computer! End Program!" The wind snatched the words from his mouth. The horse remained; the forest sped by in a blur.

A voice from seeming nowhere spoke, but Picard could not hear what it said, so fast moved the Arabian. Before he could react to the voice, the holodeck doors opened. The horse leapt over some form at the doorway, but it now moved so fast that Picard couldn’t even see if the shape was one of his crewmembers. Picard had gone quite beyond concern; his stomach knotted in genuine alarm as he and the horse careered through the corridors of the Enterprise. Barely heard cries of alarm reached Picard’s ears as the horse quickly dodged two shapes in the hallway. How had this happened?

"Sir! We’ve located Captain Picard! He’s left the ship...on the horse. He’s alive and the horse is a Terran Arabian, sir. I’m putting it on the viewscreen," DeSora informed Riker. After Worf’s run in with the horse at the holodeck doorway, Riker knew trouble was brewing. His blue eyes narrowed at the Bridge viewscreen. Upon the face of the screen was one small, fast moving horse with one human mount. Riker glanced at Troi, who seemed lost in thought.

Riker slapped his communicator. "Transporter room! Lock onto Captain Picard and beam him back!" he barked into the air. Then he looked to the Counselor. "Do you sense something?" he asked gently.

Troi looked over to him, her face reflecting her concentration. "The captain is concerned, and not a little frightened, but there is something else. Something...familiar. Perhaps more than one something. I can’t quite place it," she answered in her lilting voice.

Riker turned to consider the viewscreen. A moment passed. Two.

Then, "Sorry sir, we can’t get him. There’s something blocking the transporter."

"Damn!" Riker brought his fist down hard on the arm of the captain’s chair. He glared at the viewscreen. The horse moved at incredible speeds toward an unknown destination, with Picard on for the ride. "Send a shuttle out!"

"Sir, I do not believe sending a shuttle will accomplish anything," Data stated, turning to look at Commander Riker.

Riker shot a frustrated look at no one in particular. Data was right; who ever could make a horse run through walls could easily elude a shuttle. "Do you have any other suggestions?" he asked Data.

Data thought for a brief moment, then stated, "No, sir, I do not." Just then, Worf entered from the turbolift, a deep scowl creasing his face. DeSora moved to Science II when Worf returned to Tactical.

"Commander," Worf’s deep voice called out, "the ship that has been shadowing us has moved to intercept Captain Picard. It appears to be approximately three times the size of the Enterprise"

That was one big ship. "On screen," Riker ordered.

A jet black raven-shaped ship sped towards the moving horse. The ravenship’s wings gracefully beat, though no air existed to support its flight. Riker sat up a little straighter in his chair. He looked at Troi again, then turned to face Worf. "Life signs?"

Worf worked his controls, then stated, "None."

Riker looked at the screen again. He put a hand to his beard in frustration. Things were going from bad to worse, and there didn’t seem to be any thing he could do about it.

The wind stopped. Sound ceased. And the stars shone under the blurred legs of the horse. Picard gasped, then looked back over his shoulder. The Enterprise-D lay behind him, shrinking as the horse sped forward. What he saw might have scared him, but it didn’t. Instead it angered him. Picard spun forward. Q! Picard mentally roared. It had to be! Who else would kidnap me on a horse!

Before him, suspended in space, lay a shape much like a crow or raven. Its wings moved as though it were flying in normal air. Picard supposed it to be the size of a Terran raven, but as it grew, he realized it outsized the Enterprise by quite a good bit. He knew it could not be an actual raven, so he thought it must be a ship made to appear as one. Or one of Q’s tricks...

Riker leapt out of his seat. "What the hell...! Where did he go?" he exclaimed.

"The ship has intercepted the captain. It is turning away," Worf informed.

Riker paced, then stood facing the viewscreen behind Ensign McKnight. "Heading?"

McKnight pecked at her console, then stated incredulously, "It’s heading directly towards the Keleia Sigma system! It’s on our course exactly! It’s moving at warp 9.7"

Riker’s eyes narrowed questioningly. Damned peculiar. "Go to warp 9.75 and pursue." He could not have the Enterprise go any faster without putting them all at risk.

Suddenly the stars blinked out. The horse slowed down, then stopped. He could hear his and the horse’s breathing, but nothing else. Where ever he was, it was pitch black. He looked down at his hands and the mane. He could see them, despite the lack of light source. His knuckles were white, and he realized his hands were slick with sweat. He loosened his cramped fingers from the mane. The horse lowered itself, enough so Picard’s feet touched the black ground. He tentatively dismounted, realizing his legs hurt more than his fingers. He stood there for a moment, surveying the nothingness that surrounded him.

As Picard rounded on the horse, he prepared to yell at it, sure that it was Q in disguise. But when he saw the horse, his voice caught. The horse was no longer the speckled gray of an Arabian; its pale hair now glittered in the sourceless light, its mane and tail a deep brown, and its eyes an unnatural and suspiciously familiar yellow. The horse moved its head slightly, in a manner that would have screamed Data even if its coloring had not. Then it disappeared without warning, leaving Captain Jean-Luc Picard alone to ponder this strange turn of events.

* * *

"Come here pretty! You can’t run forever!"

Tasha Yar ran headlong through what used to be the business district of Turkangorod. It was dark and raining; Tasha hoped against hope she wouldn’t slip on the slick mud. If she did...she didn’t want to think about what would happen if she did. She looked back for an instant at her pursuers. There were five of those zhivotnoi behind her, and they were gaining. As she turned to look forward again, something shadowy stood directly in her path. She cried out as she slipped in her attempt to go around it. She desperately tried to get up, but she only managed to get to her knees when the leader (if he could even be called a leader) of the rape gang tackled her. But before he even had the chance to gloat, he found himself roughly grabbed by his throat and lifted several inches off the ground.

The others stopped in surprise; most of them slipped the same way Tasha had. Tasha looked up at the leader who hung kicking in the air, held by a shadow. He sputtered, turning red, then blue. The shadow-shape tossed him to the side after he stopped struggling, unconscious. Apparently the shadow Tasha had nearly run into had hands with which to strangle. The other gang members could not decide what to do with themselves, while Tasha began sneaking over to a small cubbyhole beneath one of the old restaurants. The three that had slipped managed to stand up, then all four stood there, looking blankly at each other, then to Tasha, then their leader, then the shadow-shape. They all appeared phenomenally unintelligent, standing there, trying to think of what to do.

When the youngest of them, perhaps he was thirteen, took a step toward the shadowy figure, it spoke. "If you touch her, I will kill you. If you touch me, I will kill you." The shadow’s speech was in as perfect a version of Russian as the gang members could understand, and its voice was more bird-like than human.

Tasha stopped behind some fallen brick, and turned to look at the shadowy thing and at the gang whose leader was now coming around. The thirteen-year-old stopped, and watched as the leader got up, rubbing his bruised throat. He was not a small man, and not a young one either. He might have been in his late thirties. His face was wrinkled, and he wore such a look of rage it scared the others and it scared Tasha as well. The leader did not seem to phase the shadow at all, however. It just repeated its warning to the older man.

The older man fumed, wanting badly to hurt someone and furious that someone had dared stop him. As he stared at the shadow, it resolved into the dark shape of a human man whom light was loath to touch. His form was so dark that no feature could be made out, except that he wore loose clothing. The furious man suddenly charged the dark silhouette. The dark man stood there, motionless until the instant the leader touched him. With one swift motion, the dark man stepped aside and struck the other’s spine, which shattered with a thick crack. The leader of the rape gang died before he hit the sodden ground.

The four younger men stood horrified at how quickly their leader had been dispatched. They turned and ran when the dark man looked over at them with invisible eyes. He made a sound like a soft pop, which seemed to fell the running Turkanans. They all rubbed their ears while the dark man stalked over to them. Tasha didn’t wait to find out what the black man did next; she took this opportunity to run to her own dugout hole-in-the-ground that she called home.

Her dugout was a few hundred meters away under the foundations of another old restaurant, and when she got there, her cat Spot greeted her by rubbing against her muddy legs. She reached down to pet the orange striped cat, looking back the way she came. She then stooped and climbed down into the small dugout and grumbled at the wet floor. Her "home" was essentially a small cave. It had a small entrance, just large enough for her to crawl in without effort. The ground from the entrance to the larger cave gently sloped down, with no standing room. The larger cave, which was now about an inch deep in rainwater, was just large enough for her to lie down comfortably. She could keep some few possessions in her dugout, but she couldn’t really stand in it. There were a few niches to hide in, and the ceiling was the cement and old pipes of the decrepit restaurant above her. From all locations in her dugout she could keep an eye on the entrance.

She searched her cave for her knife, which she had foolishly forgotten to bring when she went out to find food earlier. She cursed silently when she discovered it missing. She then carefully searched her other possessions to see if anything had been stolen. Nothing but her knife was missing. She began searching frantically for her only real weapon when Spot hissed at the entrance of her dugout. She started, then fearfully crawled to one of the few defensive niches she had carved out. She moved with absolute silence; she had learned the necessity of silence one unfortunate night when a rape gang caught her when she had not been quiet enough. She had hidden in one or another of her niches on a number of occasions when someone entered her dugout, and the intruders had never found her. She fervently wished she had her knife.

Tasha saw the silhouette of a person’s feet at her entrance, then saw a dark hand reach down and pick up her cat. Spot meowed in surprise, then to Tasha’s surprise her cat purred. Turkanan cats never did that! They were the most fanatically loyal animals on the entire planet; they always protected their masters tooth and claw and they never let anyone else even come near them. The person at the entrance murmured to her cat for a moment, then bent down to peer inside the cave. Tasha could just see Spot curled up in the stranger’s arms, in total bliss as the person scratched under her chin. She could not make out any of the stranger’s features; it was too dark to see much of anything except a faint backlighting from a dim street lamp. Who ever it was, it didn’t appear to be the dark man; she could see some light on the stranger’s clothes and hair, while no light had touched the other person.

The stranger looked at Tasha for a while, seeing even in the dim light that she was dirty, unkempt, and perhaps twelve years old. He sighed softly. Then he said in a voice identical to the dark man’s trilling, "You have a beautiful cat." Tasha heard sniffing, then the dark stranger said, "I think she is going to be a he soon. Her, or rather his, fur will be long and brown, so do not be alarmed when he comes home and you do not recognize him." With that, the now not-so-dark man (his voice gave away his identity) set the cat down and then set himself down next to Tasha’s entrance.

The rain pittered for a while. The dark man sat and Tasha hid in her niche, frightened. Spot curled up in another niche and went to sleep. It was painfully obvious that Spot had no qualms about the strange man sitting outside. Tasha had trouble maintaining her alert; she was exhausted and upset from the day’s events. After an hour, the man still hadn’t left, so Tasha carefully moved out of the cramped niche. She wearily crawled over to her entrance, figuring that if the man had any intentions toward her or her few possessions he would have acted on them already instead of sitting in the rain for so long. She stopped about a foot inside the entrance, so that if she figured wrong, the man would have trouble reaching her. Tasha looked at the shape of the enigmatic man at her entrance for a minute, then said in her stilted Russian, "Who are you?"

The stranger turned to look at Tasha, gazing at her with still invisible eyes. "That is a difficult question; I think any answer would be useless to you," he stated in his bird-like voice. He then asked, "What is your name? And your cat’s?"

Tasha paused for a moment, then said, "I’m Tasha, that’s Spot." Then she added by way of explanation, "She has a spot on her stomach."

"Tasha and Spot. I have something to give you, if you want it."

Immediately Tasha’s defenses went up, sure that he meant nothing innocent by that statement. When he moved to retrieve something from a pocket, she quickly and silently backed into her niche. He stopped moving, apparently reacting to her distress. Tasha stopped short, more alarmed than before. How could he know how she had reacted? She knew it was too dark to see inside and that she had made no noise in her movements. Spot woke up at her master’s distress and quickly poked her head outside to survey the situation. Tasha stared at the strange man, not even daring to breathe. Spot went back to her niche and slept after seeing nothing more alarming than the dark man outside.

He paused for a moment, then he said softly, "I know you do not trust me. I understand that, but someday you will. I will not move even a finger into your home. I will stay here tonight, and I promise you that as long as I stay with you, you will be safe. I will only stay here tonight, though. I will keep this promise forever, Tasha."

That surprised Tasha; no one had ever said anything quite like that to her before. It sounded nice, but people had made her promises before, and they never kept them. She didn’t think this man to be any different, even if he was unusual. She then pondered her cat’s reaction to the man for a moment, knowing that Spot had never let her down before. She decided to let her guard down just a touch and warily moved up a little closer to the entrance to her dugout. With a defensive edge to her voice, she asked, "What’s your name? What did you want to give me?"

The dark man looked away for a moment, thinking. Then he said, "You may call me Daniel. It is not my real name, but it will do. What I wished to give you is a small dagger. I thought you could use it."

A dagger! She certainly could use one, considering she lost her old knife. But she still didn’t trust the strange man. She asked suspiciously, "How do I know you won’t stab me with it?"

"I will set it right here, then I will get up and stand twenty meters away until I see you take it. Then I will return when you are back to your current location. When you take the dagger, be careful that you do not touch the blade. It is exceedingly sharp," he replied. He then set a small, glistening object just outside her entrance, walked twenty meters away, and waited. Tasha looked to see if the street lamp would illuminate this Daniel’s features, but as soon as he got far enough into the light where she might have seen him, he somehow covered himself in a black shadow.

Tasha cautiously crawled to the entrance, and sitting half in, half out of her dugout, picked up the dagger. She turned the dagger in her hand, examining it. The hilt and sheath were cylindrical and of the same crystal substance. The sheath met flush with the hilt, giving the sheathed dagger the appearance of a small, faceted diamond baton. The ebony blade of the dagger, which was just an inch and a half long, was visible as though it was caught and imbedded in the crystal. Tasha removed the sheath and moved to run her thumb along the blade, ignoring Daniel’s warning. But just before she touched it, she found an ice-cold hand clamped about hers, preventing her from touching the blade. She cried out in shock at Daniel’s unexpected speed and near painful cold of his hand. She stabbed his hand, intending to hurt rather than injure. The dagger impaled him so easily and quickly that Tasha nearly cut herself. She heard a sharp intake of breath as Daniel loosened his grip on her hand. Strange, viscous blood dripped from his wound as he drew out the dagger with his other hand. Tasha wondered at the strange Daniel as he held out the dagger, offering it to her again. She took the blade and retreated back into her cave.

Tasha stared at Daniel, who had sat down at her entrance again. A thousand questions came to mind. She picked one, demanding, "Why’d you grab my hand?"

"I warned you not to touch the blade. You might have split your thumb in two if you had touched it," Daniel replied, his trilling voice trembling slightly in pain. He held his injured hand, blood seeping profusely between his fingers and spilling out on the ground. He made no move to wrap it in anything.

Tasha understood Daniel’s warning now; she had never used a blade that cut so effortlessly. Now she wondered why he didn’t wrap his hand. She saw the faint light reflected in the steadily growing puddle of blood below Daniel’s hand. As she looked at the blood, she found that she didn’t want the strange man hurt. The thought surprised her, the feeling scared her; she had rarely cared even that much about anyone ever. She hardly cared that little about her sister Ishara, especially after she joined the Coalition and coldly took all Tasha’s food and clothing with her. She had seemingly lost her capacity to care a long time ago, but then no one had shown any compassion for her for much longer. After a moment, she shook off the introspection somewhat and crawled back into her cave to retrieve a piece of cloth. She ripped off a strip part way, then decided to test the dagger on the cloth. The cloth seemed to separate of its own accord rather than the dagger cutting it apart when she drew the tip of the knife across it. Still wondering at the sharpness of the black knife and the unfamiliar sensation of actually giving a damn, she moved back to the entrance, this time sitting down just inside. She paused a moment, then said quietly, "I’ll wrap your hand if you want."

Daniel held his hand out to Tasha. It began to glow slightly, enough so Tasha could see what she was doing but little more. She would ask him about his ability to control light later, when she got a chance. She took his hand, startled again at how incredibly cold it was. She quickly wiped off the blood with the larger cloth, then let his hand go for a few moments when the cold became unbearable. She set the large cloth down and rubbed her hand on her leg to warm it up, then took Daniel’s hand again. She wrapped his icy hand tightly with the strip of cloth and tied it. Just as she finished wrapping Daniel’s hand, she yawned. She had forgotten how tired she was.

Daniel looked at Tasha and said, "Thank you." He paused a moment, then said, "Tasha, you should sleep. Sleep well; you will not be harmed tonight." With that he turned to watch the street.

Tasha turned to crawl into the larger cave where she slept. She paused, then said, "Thank you for helping me, though I don’t know why you would." She then went to lie down and sleep, not noticing in her tiredness that the ground was dry and warm.

Daniel replied, "You are welcome," then, in a soft voice, "and you will one day know why I have helped you today."

Tasha didn’t react to the puzzling statement; she was nearly asleep when she heard it. The last thing she heard before she slept was one word. The voice seemed different and the same as Daniel’s simultaneously. There were bird-like sounds in it and a musical humming; a soft, melodic, human voice said "Tehnehnehsehlehk."

When Tasha awoke the next morning, she crawled up to her entrance and looked out. The rain had stopped and Daniel was gone. The ground was still quite muddy, and in the mud Tasha saw several sets of footprints going to and fro before her entrance, along with dropped knives and gouges where people had fallen or been thrown. Apparently, several people had come to her dugout last night and gotten into quite a fight. She wondered what had happened as she carefully collected the few knives. Daniel might have fought them off and she hoped he hadn’t been hurt, but she figured she would never know what had happened. All she could be sure of was that Daniel kept his promise; she hadn’t been hurt that night. As she returned to her dugout, Tasha picked up the ripped cloth with which she wiped Daniel’s hand. Tasha wished she had gotten the chance to ask him what he was, how he could keep the light from touching him. The cloth bore neither mark nor answer; the rain had washed away all of Daniel’s blood.

Later, Tasha forgot Daniel, as memories tend to fade over the years. All that remained for many years of Daniel was a fleeting impression, a wisp of ether, and a minor mystery to ponder behind the curtain of forgetfulness.

* * *

"We’ve reached the Keleia Sigma system. The ship is heading for Keleia Sigma A," Ensign McKnight turned to inform a very frustrated Commander Riker.

Riker drummed his fingers on the armrest of the captain’s chair. The ravenship had kept one step ahead of the Enterprise the whole way to Keleia Sigma. The ravenship had immediately increased its speed to match when the Enterprise went to warp 9.75 in pursuit. Every attempt to contact the ravenship short of smoke signals had gone unanswered. At one point, Riker ordered phasers shot across the raven’s bow to get its attention. It didn’t work. Now Riker ordered, "Conn, follow the ship to Keleia Sigma A. Worf, scan the planet; let’s see what’s there."

While Riker waited for the long-range scan, he turned to Counselor Troi. "Have you pinpointed the impressions you got from the bird ship?" he asked.

Troi looked over at Riker. She looked pensive. "No, I haven’t. All I can tell you is that the captain is there and that there is at least one other person with him. There may be two people with him, maybe more; I can’t tell."

Riker was just about to say something when Worf announced, "We are being hailed. It is from the planet."

"On screen," Riker ordered.

The viewscreen lit up with an image of a brilliant blue sky and emerald green trees. In the foreground appeared a black life form that looked like a tree with four tapering, waving branches. It wore a red drape, richly decorated in gold thread and tassels. The life form announced in an extraordinarily soft voice, "The planet is called Vs, home of the Vstrak people. Ship, accept this greeting, extended warmly from all of the Vstrak. Give a name, please." The translated voice gave no hint as to the gender of the being.

Riker stood up and strode closer to the viewscreen. He then said, "This is Commander Riker, First Officer of the Federation Starship Enterprise. We extend you greetings."

The Vstrak twisted its four branches together, then loosened them. "Greetings accepted, Commander Raaaikr of the Enterprise. This name given this Vstrak: Rjklyph. Please, come down and feast. There will be Kwi tonight; such is an honor bestowed on those who visit Vs. Bring all who are normal to such an occasion; rarely is Vs graced by visiting races. An exchange of lore will take place! Oh, the feast is looked on with excitement! Do come!"

Riker asked for a moment to consider, then made a slashing motion across his throat, indicating he wanted the communication muted. Worf acknowledged. Riker then shot an amused glance at Troi. She smiled back, then quietly informed him, "He is genuinely excited. I don’t sense any hostility or hidden agenda on his part."

The First Officer looked back to the Vstrak for a moment, then said to Troi, "New life forms. They obviously have the technology to detect us, and most likely they have other advanced technologies." Riker looked over to Worf, silently asking for the scan of the planet.

Worf informed in his deep voice, "They have subspace technology and sophisticated sensor systems, but otherwise there are no real indications of advanced civilization. No large cities, no ship fleet, no advanced weaponry. There seems to be a small number of power storage cells below the surface, but they do not appear to be connected to any power transfer system." He paused for a moment, then added, "The ravenship has just landed on the surface, some one hundred kilometers from the coordinates of the hail. A shield just formed around the ship." Worf growled. "We cannot even beam down near it."

Riker paused to consider the implications. Almost to himself, he said, "They might have kidnapped Picard, then again they might not have. They might be able to help us, in any case." He looked back at the viewscreen, then asked to have the communication unmuted.

"Rijkliph," Riker mispronounced, "we’ve decided to take you up on your offer. We’ll beam down in ten minutes, if that’s all right with you."

Rjklyph shook a little in what might have been Vstrak laughter, then replied, "Rjklyph expected retaliation from Raaaikr. The languages are obviously quite different and the names are hard to pronounce! Do come down whenever is convenient. If there is Kwi aboard the Enterprise, bring some! Vstrak always like tasting new things. Good-bye, Raaaikr." The viewscreen returned to the view of green Vs and surrounding stars.

Riker glanced over at Troi. "Kwi, huh. Sounds like he wants us to bring some food."

Troi pondered for a moment, then stated, "Probably. We can beam some down when it’s time."

Riker nodded, then ordered, "Worf, you have the Bridge. Get with Geordi and work on a way to get through the raven’s shields." He tapped his commbadge, "Ensign Sier, meet us in transporter room Three." He then pointed at Troi and Data, saying, "Troi, Data, you’re with me." He had just started to stalk over to the turbolift when he caught Data looking at him.

Riker turned, then said, "I know what you’re going to say...I’ve said it a thousand times myself. This is a first contact situation and the captain’s been kidnapped. I’m going down anyway. You aren’t going to convince me not to." He resumed stalking off the Bridge.

Troi smiled back at Data, who stood for a moment with head cocked slightly. Commander Riker had indeed known what he was going to say. Data shrugged and followed Riker and Troi off the bridge.

Captain Picard paced back and forth in the small, black room. He had explored the room in the time he was alone, and found that there were curving walls that could only be detected by running face first into them. He had carefully searched the walls for a door, but there was none he could find. So he was stuck pacing. He thought about the horse, thinking that it couldn’t be Data or Lore...becoming a horse was beyond the abilities of both of them. So he concluded it must be Q playing games with him again.

"Q!" he yelled. Picard had tried to get Q’s attention this way a number of times, but it hadn’t worked. It didn’t work this time either. He tried his communicator again, only to hear the strangled chirp that said no communications line had been established.

In an instant, with no warning, someone who appeared to be Data stood before the captain. He reflected non-existent light, the same way Picard did. The first thing Picard noticed was Data’s outfit. His clothing seemed to be something the pretentious royalty of some unknown Arabian kingdom might wear. It was all jewel tones of green and yellow. The close fitting, high collared saffron shirt had loose sleeves tucked into elbow length black gloves. About his waist was a wide forest green sash. His pants were a lighter, emerald green and tucked into knee high black leather boots. The vest was also emerald. Over it all was a thick cape; it was hooded, forest green, and lined with bright yellow. A small, black, bird shaped brooch attached the cape to the shirt. Over the hood of the cape was a cylindrical hat; it was green with blue-green reeds and small red flowers radiating from a pair of ebony needles at the forehead. In all, the costume wasn’t gaudy, but it was by far the most colorful thing Picard had seen Data wear, if this was Data.

"Who are you," Picard demanded, "and why have you brought me here?"

"I am Data. I cannot yet tell you why I brought you here. Please trust that the reason is a good one," Data stated.

Picard found it hard to believe him on both counts.

Data gazed at the captain for a moment. "I am Data. I see you do not believe me." He glanced at nothing for an instant, then carefully removed his hat and pushed back the hood of his green cape. He gently touched a bit of his dark hair, almost self-consciously. He moved his hand, revealing a long, thin, jagged white line. He then explained, "This is what gave Q the idea to give me gray hair in the ‘future’ he showed you. In reality, I never dyed my hair gray."

Picard asked, "Why exactly did you show me your hair? What is it supposed to prove?"

Data gestured to Picard, as if offering him a seat. Picard looked behind him, and found a Starfleet issue chair behind him. He glanced back at Data, wondering who he really was, then gratefully sat on the chair. All he had to sit on before was the cold floor of the lightless room.

With his hands folded in front of him, Data explained, "If you must, you may think of me as from far in the future. In a way I am; if it were not necessary for me to be here, I would say I came from the future. As it is, I am as much part of this present as you are. This bit of gray hair is the only visible scar I carry. I have not yet received it, but soon I will. When you see it later, it will prove I am who I say I am."

"You aren’t Q," Picard asked suspiciously.

"No, I am not."

Captain Picard looked at Data’s face; other than the streak in his hair, he wasn’t appreciably different from the Data on the Enterprise. For the most part, even his movements were similar, if more graceful. As Data returned the scrutiny, a shiver went up Picard’s spine. In this Data’s yellow eyes sat a look of agelessness. Forever young and forever old and aware of it beyond human capacity. Picard had never seen anything like it in his Data’s eyes; this difference was more obvious than the gray hair.

"I make you nervous," Data observed.

Picard thought about denying it, but decided not to. "Yes, somewhat."

Data held out to the captain a cup of tea that hadn’t been there a second ago. "Tea. Earl Gray, hot," he said with the slightest of smiles. "Perhaps it will make feel better."

Picard accepted the steaming cup, eyeing Data. He had trouble believing this was Data, but he would give him the benefit of the doubt for now. He wished the Android (if it were he) would explain how he managed to kidnap him on a horse of all things. This business of things appearing and disappearing without even the tiniest of warnings was beginning to get on his nerves as well. He took a sip; the tea tasted better than the Enterprise replicator’s version. He didn’t exactly know if Earl Gray would make him feel better, but it couldn’t hurt. He took another sip as he watched Data sit on the floor. The act of Data sitting made Picard wonder; Data had no real need to sit as far as the captain knew, but he did anyway. If he hadn’t been paying so much attention to Data’s actions, he probably wouldn’t have thought it strange at all that he sat. The Data he knew acted like this all the time...but then, he did not need to either. For some reason that thought made Picard a bit uneasier.

Data considered the human before him. Quite a paradoxical race, humanity. It seemed that humans found it unsettling when he did not camouflage himself in human-like characteristics. An Android in human clothing, as it were. Then, when they realized that he did indeed wear a cloak of humanity, they found that unsettling! It left Data in the proverbial rock and a hard place. Often, he opted for the less unsettling option; to move as humans did, to think as humans did, to live as humans did. Before, he had wanted to do so for his own reasons anyway, but now that was no longer true. For now he moved as a human did, but no more; it was important that the captain not underestimate him too much.

Data stood, then said, "I promise I will explain everything when the time is right. For now, I must go...elsewhere," this last word was spoken with a distinct edge that Picard rarely heard in Data’s voice. His voice softened again, "If you will excuse me." With that, he left as suddenly as he had appeared.

Picard certainly hoped Data would explain things. He hoped even more that Data would return him to the Enterprise soon, but he got the feeling that wasn’t going to happen. Since there was nothing else he could do, Picard sipped his Earl Gray.

A cool breeze blew by the Away Team, bringing unfamiliar scents and soft sounds. The clear unbroken sky was a striking sapphire, somewhat darker but no less brilliant than the Terran. Dew speckled the small, clover-like ground cover, catching the rays of the yellow star. A wisp of fog drifted over tiny plants and around boots. Trees of surpassing height stood near; their silver-white branches covered in long leaves of the most startling shade of green. Vs was a strikingly beautiful planet.

A small black bird flicked by, reminding the officers of their important mission.

Commander Riker silently motioned his companions forward as he made toward a near by cluster of domed buildings. There were approximately ten domes; the closest the inhabitants came to a town.

Soon the Away Team reached the outskirts of the small cluster of domes, where they were greeted by a strange sight. Two Vstrak moved toward them, but both moved in wildly different manners; one spun like an axle and four-spoked wheels, with all its eight appendages extended, while the other Vstrak slithered on its four lower appendages, somewhat more like humanoid walking. When the axle-moving Vstrak reached the Away Team, it gracefully righted itself to stand on its lower four appendages. The other Vstrak reached them somewhat slower. Each Vstrak had something like black five-pointed starfish attached to the middle of their trunks, and the slithering one wore an elaborate red drape. Riker figured it must be Rjklyph, but he couldn’t be sure. Data pointed his tricorder at them, analyzing the readings.

Vstrak The draped Vstrak greeted the team in a soft, silken voice, "Rjklyph is the name given. The companion is Qctvi. Commander Raaaikr, greetings. All the Vstrak everywhere extend more greetings. Please, introduce the others!"

Riker smiled at the boisterous Vstrak. "This," he gestured toward Data, "is the second officer of the Enterprise, Lieutenant Commander Data." Data bowed his head in greeting. Riker continued, moving his hand towards the Counselor, "This is Deanna Troi, ship’s counselor." Troi said hello, then Riker gestured toward the security officer. "And this is Ensign Nazzi ad Sier." The reptilian Sier clicked her clawed fingers together in a formal Deitang greeting.

Rjklyph bounced a little, then said, "Oh, explain the differences! Troi touches, Dat’e bounds, but the rest? Raaaikr is of what race, Deeihna Troi, Dat’e, Nazzi ad Sier, what races?"

The officers glanced at one another, unsure what "touching" and "bounding" were. The question of races was easy to handle though. Riker cocked his head to one side, explaining. "My race is called Human. I’m a Terran Human, which means I come from Earth. Troi is half Betazoid, half Human. Data is an Android, and Sier is a Deitang. Explaining our differences will take a lot longer." He paused a moment, then said, "We need to ask you something. A ship shaped like a black bird landed on your planet a little while ago, and we need to know if you know anything about it."

Rjklyph’s companion Qctvi hissed, "Words that give hearing aches! Did Rjklyph forget to warn the Enterprise crew about those words? Some will be upset!"

Rjklyph hissed back, then addressed Riker. "Apologies are in order. The Vstrak do not use these...impersonal, confusing words. Anyway, most Vstrak are accustomed to the use of confusing words, but some...aristocratic Vstrak find offense. The Vstrak have not named those words, but such words are used by visitors often, perhaps the words are named?" It tipped its tapering appendages closer, as if in question.

Riker glanced at Data, who was the only person not using a Universal Translator and the only one who would remember everything said.

Data thought for several milliseconds, then informed the commander in Standard, "I believe the Vstrak object to the use of personal pronouns. Their language does not have any equivalent, and they are likely confused by them, as their usage is vague when one is not used to such words."

Riker winced at the thought of having to forgo the use of pronouns. Troi almost, almost, smiled at the sense of inconvenience she felt from Will. Riker saw it and shot her a glance, then turned to the officers. He spoke softly, so the Vstrak hopefully wouldn’t hear him, "We’re going to have to avoid pronouns guys. Do the best you can."

Ensign Sier spoke in her hissing voice, "That is not a problem, sir." Her words were characteristically drawn out and slow, with every word carefully pronounced.

"All right." Riker turned back to Rjklyph and Qctvi, saying, "Um, Rijkliph, as um, oh damn. Sorry. Data! Might um, uh could uh..." He put a hand to his forehead and raked it through his hair. Riker was foundering badly in his attempt to speak his pronoun riddled Standard without pronouns. Troi almost smiled again. Riker glared this time, wondering why she was deriving so much amusement from his predicament.

Data stated, "Commander, if you are asking me to translate your words into Vstrak, I will, but you will need to deactivate your Translator."

"Please," Riker breathed. He removed his commbadge and tapped a small button on its reverse, deactivating his Universal Translator. He gestured to the Troi, silently asking if she wanted to be translated. She thought for a moment, her black eyes looking off, then she deactivated her translator as well. She didn’t trust herself to speak Standard or Betazoid without pronouns either, especially in a normal conversation.

Riker started again, confident that the Vstrak wouldn’t be offended by his pronouns. "We need to know if you know anything about the ship that landed on your planet a few hours ago, it’s very important."

Data anticipated and translated almost the instant the words left Riker’s mouth. "Krgjksdriis Enterprise amphfrxz Vstrak swqytoe dnjlii ghbvzhna Vs ssidii ssidii’iik jklpn-awso. Krgjksdriis Enterprise hydqzxqur."

That’s one tongue twister of a language, Riker thought upon hearing untranslated Vstrak. It was worse than Klingon. At least Klingons believed in the regular use of vowels.

Rjklyph stated, and Data translated, "Lore will be exchanged over the feast."

Riker looked upset about having to wait until dinner to find out if these Vstrak had anything to do with the captain’s disappearance. Troi laid an understanding hand on his arm.

Riker wiped his beard, then said, "Rjklyph, their words you asked about are called ‘pronouns’. Could you tell us what you meant by ‘touches’ and ‘bounds’?"

Data translated, "Rjklyph ffxcjl drglis ‘pronouns’. Meaussr tjklws pliis-ta drglis ‘kataka’, ‘qctkljkit’?"

Rjklyph spoke, then it and Qctvi began to slither away. Data translated. "Please, explanations in travels. Come to the feasting dome. Ah, touches is the silent communication. Troi touches, or tries.... And bounds is an extreme word for life force. Vstrak usually describe as ‘flow’, but Data ‘flows’ too much for the word! Far more than the average Kwi."

As the Away Team joined Rjklyph, Troi pointed out, "I didn’t sense it, but the Vstrak must be telepathic. I think Rjklyph--" Riker leveled an eye at her when she pronounced its name better than he had, "--meant that I’m partially telepathic."

The group arrived at the feasting dome, interrupting further conversation. The feasting dome was a medium sized, undecorated gray igloo. It had an arched doorway, but no door. Upon entering, Rjklyph and Qctvi left their company. The officers noticed first how dark it was. There were no windows; the only light emanated from a small, blue-white sphere hanging from a long green chain attached to the center of the ceiling. Piles of richly ornamented pillows were scattered everywhere, their gold rope and gold tassels reflecting he light. Long tapestries hung from the curved walls, barely visible in the dim light. Approximately ten Vstrak milled about, examining the tapestries, sitting on the pillows, or donning drapes of various colors. More Vstrak streamed into the feasting dome. In the center of the dome was a lowered hollow, something like a shallow pit. Inside the hollow were several varieties of life forms, some scurrying to and fro, others sitting, and still others standing. Two of the life forms attracted the officer’s attention. The two were shaped something like kangaroos crossed with mice; they had long, pointed ears, long whiskers, arms that ended in three slender fingers, and they were about as tall as an average Human. What caught the crew’s attention was their coloring; both creatures had fur of the shiniest silver and the irises of their large eyes were also silver. One of them caught the crew looking at it, so it bestowed upon them a look of utter contempt. Troi sucked in a breath, then turned to Commander Riker.

"Will," she said, "they are sentient!"

Just then a Vstrak loped over and introduced itself, interrupting Riker before he could get a word out. Data translated its words, "The name is Pljkol’trwzor. Rjklyph has informed the attending Vstrak of the words, but none here care since Qctvi left. The ‘pronouns’ will not offend."

Riker looked at the Vstrak, then turned his Translator on. "Thank you for telling me." He paused for a moment, thoughtful. Then, pointing at the silver kangaroos, asked, "What are those? Are they sentient?"

Pljkol’trwzor answered, "Oh, the Kwi? Kwi is the name, the Kwi name for Kwi. Quite a delicacy, usually visitors are honored with such. Kwi are sentient and intelligent, usually, but one here is quite stupid. The other is old; that explains the capture. Did Riker bring any Kwi? Rjklyph thought there might have been a Kwi, but there was uncertainty."

Riker suddenly paled at the implication. Vstrak ate sentient beings? He stopped himself before he thought about it further; it was completely ethnocentric to condemn the Vstrak for their eating habits, no matter how unjust they seemed. Riker motioned Data over, who had been scanning everything after Riker reactivated his Universal Translator.

When Data arrived, Riker asked him to scan the Kwi. As Data scanned the Kwi, a look of bewilderment settled on his face. He pointed his tricorder at the Pljkol’trwzor, then back at the Kwi. Data finished his scan, then stood there, apparently confused. He opened his mouth to say something, then closed it again.

"Spit it out!" Riker said, not unfriendly.

Data leveled his golden gaze at Riker. He reported, "The Kwi, sir, are machines. They are highly sophisticated in nature, but not in artifice. They are perfectly natural."

Riker looked over in question at the Kwi, understanding Data’s consternation. Rjklyph rejoined them then, explaining in a voice full of culinary relish, "Kwi are the other Vs race! Kwi are delicious, with life so clear that a Vstrak might almost weep. Vstrak catch Kwi and then hold a feast. If any wish to, go speak to the Kwi. The Kwi will explain better than ineloquent Vstrak."

"Maybe we’ll do that," Riker stated. He motioned the group over to the edge of the pit. While they walked, Data informed them of what he had discovered about the Vstrak. "They are closest in analogy to Terran annelids in body structure and musculature. The have a central nervous system, with their brains located at the lowest point on their trunk--"

Riker interrupted, speaking in a semi-amused voice, "You mean their brains really are between their legs?"

Deanna promptly hit him, stating, "That was uncalled for."

Data looked coolly at Riker, then replied, "In essence, yes, if you wish to call their lower ring of appendages ‘legs’." He then continued his report, "Their eight appendages are more like octopi tentacles. They do not have any sex; rather they reproduce by budding or regeneration of severed limbs. The five pointed objects on their trunks are analogous to mouths. They eat by absorbing and transporting energy from their independent mouths to their bodies. They do not eat matter in the fashion we are accustomed to."

Looking down into the shallow pit in the center of the dome, Riker stated, "I guess that’s why all the food is still alive. To bad they didn’t bring any ghargh."

Sier hissed in anticipation, her yellow eyes bright with hunger for live flesh. Troi glanced at Riker, unable to fathom his enjoyment of slimy serpent worms slithering around after being eaten. Just imagining it was enough to turn Deanna’s stomach. She then looked back at the Kwi. She asked the taller Kwi, "Why are you here?"

The Kwi glared at her with such anger she nearly took a step back. "I don’t belong here! I’m young! Those stupid, slow, thick, worm-things won’t let me go!"

The other Kwi looked at her companion, then said to Troi in a voice as silver as her fur, "We have been caught. It is our form of population control. If the Vstrak did not catch us when we are old or feeble, then Kwi would overrun this planet. We live long lives, and we have many children. My companion, who is young, was the seventeenth and last child of a female Kwi who had gotten so old she thought to waste the materials of our dead by making Kwi without her dead mate. As she was female, her programming skills were precarious at best. My companion is dangerously unstable and needed to be caught, to keep the Kwi species from contamination. As for me, I am old, nearing death, and I got caught. So I will nourish you, and so will my companion."

Riker said, "So you accept being food for the Vstrak."

The shorter Kwi looked up at Riker and said, "Yes. Most Kwi of normal creation are told of our relationship to the Vstrak. They are predators, and we are prey. We are told that sometimes a young Vstrak, newly budded, will want to know why its food speaks, so we are told while still young how to explain it. Very often, the Kwi and Vstrak meet and talk. The Vstrak are kind, civilized, and generous and they are rarely cruel or untrustworthy; no Kwi worries about tricks when the Vstrak and Kwi meet, because there is an ancient tradition among the Vstrak of honoring one’s guests as dear friends. Anyway, we are far to fast for a Vstrak to catch us; they must lay traps and outsmart us. I was trapped, but my companion walked into a dome full of Vstrak, who caught him easily."

Deanna turned to Riker and said, "I believe she is telling the truth. I sense a remarkable lack of deceit among these beings, both the Vstrak and the Kwi. They seem to be honest to a fault."

The taller Kwi stomped around, then huffed, "I hurt them! They didn’t catch me without injury!" The Kwi then grabbed Sier’s foot and jerked his hand back just a little. Sier hissed in pain, jerking her foot back. She hissed louder; apparently her reflex made the pain worse. Data reached down and grabbed the Kwi’s hand and forced him to let go of Sier. The Kwi bit at Data’s hand while trying to yank his hand away from Data. Data looked into the Kwi’s eyes, his expression one of unyielding will. The Kwi gazed back, understanding not the expression but rather the force behind it, then screamed in near panic, "Let go of my hand!" Data grabbed the Kwi’s wrist, and the Kwi screeched in pain. He used the instant that the Kwi stopped pulling to remove his hands.

Ensign Sier sat down. Tiny puncture wounds and dark green blood covered her bootless, scaly foot. She began to lick her wounds with her green, forked tongue. Soon the wounds clotted, bandaged with Deitang saliva.

"Nazzi, are you all right?" Riker asked in concern. Sier flicked her forked tongue, then nodded slowly. Her slit pupils opened wide in anger at the tall Kwi, but the expression was lost on him.

"What did you do!" Riker demanded as the Away Team took a step back, out of the Kwi’s reach. Data examined his hands, and finding them only slightly injured, dropped them to his side.

The shorter Kwi answered, "Our fur is made of silver, and all of it is quite sharp. Our fur is our main defense; we aren’t strong. My companion is a fool for trying to hurt your friends, and I am truly sorry he did. I can’t believe he demanded his hand back!" She looked at her companion and addressed him as a teacher would a recalcitrant student, "Didn’t you think that that one didn’t let go because you were pulling your fur into his hand? He couldn’t let go!" The tall Kwi made a derisive noise in response.

Data looked to the shorter Kwi. He asked, "How is it that you are natural machines? Did you evolve?" On his face was an expression that only those who knew him well could decipher as enthusiasm, for the newness and the kinship of the Kwi to Data.

The short Kwi explained. "We don’t really know. When we build and program our children, it is half instinctively. That allows the randomness of natural beings, as well as the inherent instability of nature. There are other life forms such as ourselves on Vs, so perhaps we evolved. None of the life like us leaves fossils; we recycle our mechanics, leaving no record of our past."

Rjklyph joined them then, slithering up to Riker. "The feast will begin shortly. All the Vstrak are touching; all the Vstrak to come have come. So, no mention was made if Raaaikr brought Kwi. Is this one Kwi? There is some confusion because Dat’e is obviously one Raaaikr works with, one who has not been caught. But...Dat’e does sense like Kwi." It laid a tentacle on Data’s shoulder, while another over anxious Vstrak bumped into him.

Before anyone could answer in a resounding negative, the over anxious Vstrak bobbed up and down, nearly knocking off its thick green drape. "Oh! Such kind visitors! To bring this one! Oh, so clear, so clear! Hurry up the feast, Wstfln cannot wait!" The other Vstrak suddenly came to attention; some wondering what Wstfln was talking about, others knowing exactly.

Data suddenly looked a little tired, a little more subdued than usual. Just as suddenly it passed, so quickly it caused the others to doubt whether they had seen it in the first place. Troi asked him, "Are you all right?"

Data said, "I am fine. However, I believe that Wstfln tried to...taste me."

The idea of Data being eaten thoroughly disgusted Riker. He carefully thought about his response, not wishing to upset a first contact situation. He took into account the Kwi’s and the Vstrak’s behavior and words up to this point, as well as the good Counselor’s impression of their honesty, then chose a course of action. He told Rjklyph, and to be sure it was in no uncertain terms he used no pronouns, "Data isn’t Kwi! Don’t try and eat one of the Enterprise’s officers and one of Vs’s visitors! Understood?" He glared pointedly at Wstfln, even though he addressed Rjklyph.

"Yes, of course! Most Vstrak," Rjklyph declared, obviously joining Riker in his glaring at Wstfln, even if Vstrak eyes were invisible, "do not eat the guests!" Rjklyph’s attention returned to the Away Team. It said, "Apologies, Raaaikr, Dat’e. Rjklyph hopes no one else will become selfish and taste Dat’e, but perhaps Dat’e should return to the Enterprise, just to be sure."

"Perhaps so.... Data, go back to the ship. Have Beverly look at you then try and track down some of the Kwi. They may know something about the ravenship." Riker said.

Data nodded and walked outside to call the Enterprise. When Rjklyph heard the characteristic sound of the transporter, it bounced a little, probably laughing. It then turned and slithered toward a large pile of pillows. It announced the beginning of the feast, causing the other Vstrak to scramble for pillows. They carried them, one at a time and held between their four top tentacles, over to the edge of the food pit. Riker nodded to the remaining Away Team and they went and collected some pillows. The pillows felt as though they were made of velvet and thick, soft down. The rich gold brocade and edging looked and felt like spun silk.

Sier patted one of the pillows, a blue one, then turned it over in her hands. She hissed incidentally, "A wonder the Vstrak can make such things with no fingers." She looked over at the wall, noticing a thick tapestry. She looked up at Riker and extended a claw at it, "Look at the design...a blackbird in space."

Riker looked up at the tapestry. He agreed, saying, "You’re right. I’m going to ask Rijkliph about it after the feast starts. That’s when it said it would say something about it." He carried his pillow over to join the Vstrak at the pit. Troi and Sier followed suit.

When they reached the edge of the pit, Rjklyph slithered up a small pile of pillows. It announced, "The Vstrak around Vs now attend through the toucher, Rjklyph. The whole of the Vstrak welcomes the visitors, with whom the Vstrak will exchange lore! Feast!" With that, Rjklyph slithered toward the Away Team. The other Vstrak somehow separated their five-pointed mouths and floated them down onto one animal or another.

While Rjklyph approached, Troi informed Riker and Sier that she suspected the Vstrak communicated telepathically with other Vstrak the same way others used communicators. Riker nodded, then looked at the animals skittering around. He looked at the Kwi, and he felt sick at the sight of them being eaten, even if it was by the extraction of energy. He saw Troi felt similarly. He tried not to think about the Kwi. He turned his thoughts to eating; he didn’t want to offend the Vstrak by not sharing in their feast.

"How are we going to eat? They’re all alive!" If the animals had been dead and cooked, Riker would have no trouble eating them; unlike most Terran Humans, he had no qualms concerning carnivory. Growing up in Alaska didn’t often afford one the luxury of vegetarianism. He’d also met Nazzi ad Sier who, as a Deitang, was by nature a strict carnivore. She had explained that the Deitang had almost decided not to join the Federation when they heard, through the Antican Embassy (the Anticans were also strict carnivores), about certain Enterprise crew members spouting off about the moral and ethical rightness of not eating animals. When Nazzi told him that, Riker became quite embarrassed, knowing that he and Tasha were the ones to which the Anticans had referred. He had tried to explain it was just the enslavement of animals for food that bothered him, but Nazzi ad Sier came back by informing him that his use of ‘enslavement’ suggested that animals were intelligent, which rendered all Deitang only slightly better than cannibals. Riker got the point.

In light of Sier’s views, he was not at all surprised when she said, "You have a phaser, Commander. Shoot what looks good and cook it with the heat setting. Personally, I want to eat something alive. It’s been a long time." With that, Ensign Sier leaned down at the edge of the pit. Her long, scaly tail kept her balance as she moved the majority of her torso out into the air above the pit. Her clawed fingers splayed out, held like a hawk’s talons as it closes for the kill. Her thin tongue flicked exactly as a Terran snake and the small crest of pointed scales that was the only outward indicator of her sex flattened against her skull. Her toes gripped the edge of the pit, their velociraptor-like hooked claws tapping the ground. Sier looked every inch a dangerous predator. She moved like lightening and expertly caught a small, furry animal that resembled a rabbit. She stood up with her prey squirming between her hands. She met Riker’s blue eyes with her gold, as if to say, "What are you waiting for?"

Riker blinked, thinking, No wonder she’s in security. Will glanced over at Troi, then shrugged and reached into his pocket to retrieve his Type I phaser. He looked into the food pit, and upon finding a small animal without a Vstrak mouth on it, he shot it. He then picked up the dead animal and began heating it with his phaser.

Sier bit into her animal, causing it to squeal once and die. The Vstrak looked around, then stared at Sier. She contentedly tore off small strips of the animal and swallowed them whole, not noticing the eyeless gaze of every Vstrak in attendance. Rjklyph arrived just then. It said in surprise, "The Vstrak are shocked...Of course no one expected sameness, but the Deitang eats like a beast! Rjklyph would be disgusted, but Rjklyph understands the difference...Perhaps Sier is disgusted with the Vstrak way of eating?"

Sier gazed at the Vstrak. She stated curtly, "No." She blinked once, then slid her gaze to her humanoid companions. She added, "If it makes you feel better, they are disgusted by your eating habits." The other Vstrak returned to eating; apparently they were satisfied with her statement. Sier returned to her meal.

Rjklyph addressed Riker. "Now to exchange lore. Raaaikr was concerned with a bird-shaped ship that landed on Vs? The Vstrak have one such ship, but the ship has never been used. Two were built by the Qct Ship Builders; one was used to travel to the planet on the other side of Hs, the sun. The crew, there were thirty Vstrak aboard, all died only a day after leaving Vs. Now the Vstrak know why. No Vstrak can survive space travel. Somehow, the Vstrak must be in contact with Vs. Perhaps the air is the cause, perhaps the gravity. Anyway, the only possibility of the ship being of Vs origin is if the rumors are true concerning Qctvtjstryu. Qctvtjstryu brought together the Qct Ship Builders and supplied the Builders with raw materials and currency. Qctvtjstryu was half-insane. Qctvtjstryu wanted to eat everything, the whole universe if there was any possibility; Qctvtjstryu may have been dangerous. Qctvtjstryu was said to have survived the trip to the other planet, but there has been little proof. The inhabitants of the other planet informed the Vstrak that a large black ship crashed on the planet and fell down into a cavern. The inhabitants said that the planet was being hollowed out by something, perhaps the crew of the Vstrak ship. This was over seven hundred years ago; but yesterday there was a communication from the other planet. The Vstrak were told that the planet was breaking up because a giant worm was emerging and killing everything. This could be Qctvtjstryu; Vstrak science suggests that if a Vstrak were to survive space travel, anything could happen. So, if the rumor is true, the inhabitants of the other planet would have the ship and may have sent messengers to get some help. There was another ship other than the Enterprise detected in the Hs system, but the trackers didn’t know the origin of the ship. The trackers thought the ship a visitor, but seven hundred years have passed; the ship may be Vstrak."

Commander Riker absorbed the information for a few minutes. He then turned to Troi, a question in his eyes.

Troi said, "I don’t sense any deception. I think it is telling the truth."

Riker looked back to Rjklyph. "Our captain has been kidnapped by whoever is in the ravenship. Would you know if someone had used the other Vstrak ship recently? Could it have been used without someone knowing about it?"

"Of course," said Rjklyph, "but to deceive the Vstrak touch, that is, the Vstrak way of communicating long distance, would be difficult. The Vstrak offer help, if Raaaikr needs. But the Vstrak wouldn’t kidnap a captain, there is no reason. Try speaking with the inhabitants of the other planet. There may be help from the others. Now, do eat and share some of the lore of the Enterprise."

Riker nodded. There wasn’t really anything he could do about the ravenship right now, and it might be rude to leave the feast, considering it was a first contact.

Doctor Beverly Crusher sat in her office, fiddling with a PADD. She was supposed to be working on her monthly report, but she couldn’t keep her mind on it. She was worried about Jean-Luc. How could he have been kidnapped, and off the Holodeck no less? Geordi had called her a few minutes ago to tell her that they were still working on a way to get through to the ravenship, but they hadn’t had any success yet. He told her he would keep her advised. She was still worried.

Dr. Crusher looked up from her desk to find Data walking into Sickbay. She set down her PADD and walked out of her office to meet him. "What can I do for you?" she said.

"I need you to examine me to be sure nothing has escaped my diagnostics."

Dr. Crusher raised her eyebrows. "What happened?"

As Data walked toward the diagnostic bed, he explained. "The Vstrak, one of the sentient forms on this planet, derive sustenance from the energy of various other biological and exobiological forms. One of their favorite food sources is a sentient race of natural machines, the Kwi. One of the Vstrak was impatient to discover if I was a form of alien Kwi, so it tasted me. It drained a minuscule amount of my energy stores, not so much that I had to eat anything to replace it." Data sat down, then continued, "I need to know if that is all that occurred."

A look of shock crossed Beverly’s face. "They sound barbaric...just shy of cannibals." She reached into the deep pocket of her medical smock and retrieved her tricorder, opened it, and began scanning Data with the Feinberger attachment of the tricorder.

"They are not. The Kwi accept the Vstrak as predators. According to them, the Vstrak are necessary to keep them from overrunning Vs with unhealthy and mentally deficient Kwi. Apparently, when the Kwi reach a certain age, they become senile and attempt to create children when they are no longer capable. They and the Vstrak have a classic predator-prey relationship. The only difference is they are both sentient and aware of the situation," Data explained calmly.

"Hmmph," replied the doctor, shrugging. "I guess they’re not so much barbaric as alien...sometimes Humans get too comfortable with thinking everyone is like us, since so many races are similar. I know I’ve made that mistake often enough." She thought for a moment as she tapped a few buttons on her tricorder, then said, "Sometimes I wish something would wake us up from time to time, just enough so we’re alert enough to take differences into account."

"I agree," Data said softly. Then his voice lightened, "But perhaps you should ‘be careful what you wish for.’"

Dr. Crusher glanced up from her tricorder. She looked thoughtful for a moment, then she smiled. Data was right on both points; he had a personal stake in Humanity’s sometimes doltish behavior and she really shouldn’t wish for trouble. The Enterprise crew had and would always have more dangerous and more exciting adventures than any crew had a right to, and wishing for them would only aggravate the situation. "I should be. Well, I’ve finished my scan, and it looks like there’s only one slight difference from your normal readings." She turned the tricorder so Data could see it. "See those two marks? With you, they usually move together in a slow oscillation, right at the top of the range. A few moments ago, they were twitching, but now they have returned to your normal."

Data considered the readings for a moment, then looked at Dr. Crusher. "Why?"

Dr. Crusher pushed a bit of red hair away from her face. "I don’t know. Your physiology is so different that the tricorder doesn’t know what to make of it. All these ranges have a known meaning for biological organisms, but for you...well, obviously the heartbeat reading can’t refer to your pulse, since it’s calibrated to take readings off of a centralized circulatory system, which you don’t have. All the labels are meaningless for you, but the readings are almost always consistent. I’ve figured out what part of the readings refer to over the years, but I never knew why those two moved in unison like that. I suppose they must have something to do with your energy, since that’s what you said the Vstrak took from you. I don’t know how; the tricorder puts your energy level on a separate range."

Data thought about it for a moment. He asked, "There is nothing else?"

"Well, there is your hands, but I think you can fix them as well as I can. Other than that you’re as normal as ever."

Data nodded, then stood. "Thank you, Doctor." He handed her one of the memory cells from his tricorder. "These are the readings I took from the Vstrak and the Kwi."

Dr. Crusher took the cell, thanking Data for it. Perhaps studying new life forms would take her mind off her worry at least. She turned to her office as Data left Sickbay, determined to stop worrying. She sat down in her office chair, placed the memory cell in her PADD, and began examining Data’s tricorder readings, beginning with the Vstrak.

* * *

The yellow sun glowed warmly in the blue California sky. It was late spring, just before the weather turned truly hot. The medium, green stalks of grass bent slightly in the gentle breeze, while bird song and the sent of wildflowers drifted about. Insects moved under and over the grass, crawling, hopping and flitting from blade to blade. One insect in particular captured the intense attention of the Android lying in the turf. The insect hopped onto a blade of grass, turned around, and stared back at Data. It was a tiny, nymph grasshopper, barely one centimeter long. Its head, like most infants, was far larger in relation to its body than an adult’s. Its jewel-like compound eyes caught the light in a way reminiscent of dewdrops. A tiny dark spot played about the surface of its eyes, looking so much like a pupil that some might think it was. The baby grasshopper cleaned one of its straight antennae with its front foot, then stretched one of its tiny hind legs, exposing minuscule barbs and little claws. Two black stripes ran down the back of the nymph, from just below its eyes to the tip of its abdomen. From between its eyes came a long, cream colored stripe reminiscent of a skunk. If the little grasshopper had been otherwise all black, it might have looked like a skunk, but the tiny herringbone pattern on its hind legs was off-white, as were its legs. The grasshopper turned around again, preparing to leap to another blade of grass. This little grasshopper was far too young to have even the tiniest of wings. The baby grasshopper leaped, and Data watched in fascination as the tiny legs pushed off the grass. The grasshopper landed on a near-by bit of clover, so Data carefully crawled toward it. Before Data could settle down to watch the nymph, two giant feet, relatively speaking, clad in Parisses Squares boots scared the grasshopper away. Without looking up, Data knew the feet belonged to Tasha Yar.

"Hello," said Data. He scanned the grass until he found the grasshopper, then moved slowly toward it.

Tasha watched in disbelief as Data stalked what looked like just more grass. He never looked more feline in movement than now. With the effortlessness born of practice, she derailed that thought in favor of the previous disbelief. "What in the hell are you doing?"

"I am watching a nymph grasshopper," Data informed her matter-of-factly. He settled down in the grass again, intently contemplating the tiny insect.

"Why?" She didn’t add that she thought it a little strange for someone to spend their shore leave staring at bugs.

Data looked up at her. "I have never seen this particular variety of grasshopper before. Its coloration is striking." He paused, then added, "It is fascinating."

"How can you find a tiny little bug fascinating? Don’t you have better things to do?" She noticed Data’s expression change slightly, but she didn’t quite know what it meant.

Still looking up at Tasha, Data asked, "Have you ever watched a grasshopper?"

"No. Seen one bug, you’ve seen them all." She didn’t exactly feel that way; part of her wanted to see what it was about the grasshopper that was so fascinating, or rather see what it was in Data that could be so fascinated. But it seemed too childish, or too interested.

"I have not ‘seen them all,’" Data stated, his voice touched with a slight emphasis that said the statement was an answer to her second question rather than a reply to her last comment. He returned to his contemplation of the insect.

It took Tasha just a moment to realize he was answering her question. She sat down carefully and succeeded in not disturbing the tiny grasshopper. She plucked at a long blade of grass, suddenly uncomfortable. A minor war ensued between her impulsiveness, her curiosity, her intense desire to suddenly be somewhere else, the two-horned problem of her very real but completely denied attraction to Data, and her strong sense of privacy. For a moment the war raged, then in an almost conscious effort to pretend she was not in pitched battle with herself, she asked Data where Geordi was. "I was looking for him when I came by. He promised he would play Parisses Squares with us, but I think I’m going to have to twist his arm to keep his promise." She mentally congratulated herself on a totally innocuous question.

Data looked over at her, saying, "He went to look for you. He also thought it strange that I should spend my time ‘bug watching instead of experiencing life.’"

"Oh." Tasha paused, then added, "I probably should go find him." She made no move to leave. Instead she watched the grasshopper. She watched it extend one tiny leg then shake its little foot. It turned on its blade of grass and wiggled its antennae. Its little eyes gleamed and its small legs moved. Such a tiny thing. Before the thought registered, she blurted out, "But this is experiencing life for you, isn’t it?" She hadn’t quite wanted to ask that, it was almost too personal, too prying; she almost felt as though she couldn’t act normally around him, and she wondered if it was because she didn’t want Data to get any mixed messages or if she was just worried about doing something really stupid. Certainly she was no stranger to ill-conceived conduct.

Data tilted his head slightly, his face expressionless. "Yes," he said simply, without his characteristic elaboration. He turned back to looking at the grasshopper, but this time it was without the intensity of before. He apparently had something on his mind. Tasha was secretly relieved that Data hadn’t asked her any questions.

Both continued to look at the little grasshopper without seeing it for a few moments that felt, to Tasha at least, as hours. Data finally broke the silence. "Most humans do not accept this as a valid pursuit. Little I do seems of value to them." His tone betrayed a deeper meaning to the words he voiced, and a reluctance to discuss it further. Something in the tone of his voice started Tasha feeling guilty, as though she had done something wrong, but she couldn’t think of what it was.

Unfeeling logic left no room for hurt or insult. But Data sure did sound hurt and insulted. Maybe she was hearing things. Maybe Data only sounded that way because of some programming. As soon as that thought occurred to Tasha, it seemed too grotesque to be true. It would be a hideous farce, a horrible lie for that hurt tone to be programming. It would mean that Data was nothing but a machine, no, less than that, less than nothing. Somehow she couldn’t accept that. He was too gentle, too kind, too real to be nothing but an awful delusion. That left her with one option, the one that she now realized should have been obvious from the very start: he wasn’t unfeeling. That was quite a can of worms, as the Terran Humans say, but it was long since opened, and those metaphorical worms had been crawling around for quite some time. Data was not unfeeling.

For some reason that observation brought to Tasha’s mind questions that only needed to be asked before the observation was made. Feeling persons do things irrational without anyone needing to look further for a reason. Those very same irrational acts should raise eyebrows when performed by utterly rational beings, shouldn’t they? And a certain supposedly rational being who can’t feel any pleasure had done something, or rather let something happen that shouldn’t have even interested him under the best of conditions. Why? It made no sense, unless the aforementioned rational person wasn’t so rational... If I hadn’t been as drunk as a Saurian on Year’s End, I might have thought to ask, thought Tasha with not a little embarrassment. But then again, if I hadn’t been, it really would have "never happened," and I wouldn’t have needed to think about why. Tasha abruptly knew what it was that she was feeling guilty about. Telling Data "it never happened" seemed like a Good Idea At The Time, but now, three months later, she wasn’t so sure. Now it seemed extremely selfish. She didn’t know if she warranted feeling guilty over it, but she had an inkling, and she needed to be sure. If she had hurt Data in any way, she needed to know, even if it meant taking a peek into what might very well be Pandora’s Box. She did not look forward to asking ‘why?’ in order to confirm her feeling, but ask she would.

After she looked at the grasshopper for a little longer.

The tiny insect inconsiderately hopped away.

Tasha fiddled with a blade of grass, hoping that Data would follow the grasshopper and thereby lend her more time to put off asking her questions. He didn’t; instead he rolled over on his back, laying his hands across his chest. He closed his eyes and began breathing in an odd way, inhaling and exhaling very slowly.

"Now what are you doing?" Tasha asked, grateful for the short time to procrastinate.

"I am smelling the air and the scents carried on the air."

Another obscure pastime. "What sort of things do you smell?"

Data thought for a brief instant, then answered, "Among other things, nitrogen, oxygen, seventeen varieties of wildflower, ten varieties of butterfly, several hundred nymph grasshoppers, squirrels, frogs, toads, cotton-tail rabbits, six varieties of snake, many birds, grasses, some bushes, trees, you, and a game of Parisses Squares. They may have started without you, or perhaps they are practicing."

Shocked, Tasha asked, "How can you possibly smell a game of Parisses Squares!?"

"We are downwind. All members of the team are of mammalian species, and mammals sweat. That is what I smell, well as their clothing. You said there was a game planned, and I assumed that is why I smelled what I did."

"Are all your senses that good?" It was an almost frightening thought, that Data could be aware of things that no one else could ever know. How many people can count grasshoppers by scent?

"No. My sense of taste is not generalizing enough. I can only taste ingredients."

"Oh." Tasha paused for a long moment while Data continued sniffing the air. She waited as long as she could stand to wait, then she asked, "Do you mind if I ask you a personal question?"

Data replied, "You may ask." But I may not answer, Tasha added mentally.

Tasha looked down at her hands a moment, then ran one through her short blond hair. She sighed sharply, then asked in a tone somewhat harsher than she intended, "Why did you let me seduce you?"

Data opened his eyes to look at her in a manner such as one would expect if he were asked his personal thoughts on the direction of the wind. In a tone equally unperturbed, Data asked, "We are speaking hypothetically?"

Tasha blinked a few times. "Um," she muttered. Data never reacted the way he was supposed to. She thought she would have at least caught him off-guard, instead he surprised her. "Um," she continued, "no, no, we’re not speaking hypothetically."

"If I tell you, will you promise not to tell anyone else?"

She thought for a moment, then answered, "Yeah, I promise." As she had long ago, he must have discovered that privacy gave him safety from the hypocritical world, with its nice face and iron teeth.

Data looked up at the clear blue sky for a moment. "Will you be angry if I answer truthfully?" He sounded subdued.

"What?" Tasha replied loudly, "Why would I be angry? I’m trying to get an honest answer here!"

Data continued in the same quite tone. "I have often found that humans become upset, uneasy, and sometimes angry when they discover certain things about me. I am unsure why. Perhaps it is because I am a machine, and as such they believe I have no right to it."

Tasha narrowed her eyes at her companion. She pulled up one leg and set her chin on her knee, crossing her arms in front of her shin. "What exactly is ‘it,’" she asked thoughtfully.

Data looked back at her. He made a little noise that might, might have been a sigh. "A need." He flicked his gold eyes back to the sky. "I need someone to love me."

Of all the things Tasha was not expecting, that was certainly farthest from her mind. She was sure she had been prepared for some response, just not that one. It took a few moments for the disclosure’s fuller significance to register. It did register, coloring many things in wide strokes of dark. Oooooh my... thought Tasha as she slid her face down so that her forehead now rested on her knee. Pandora’s Box indeed. She felt awful, really, really, awful. Well of course he let me seduce him! Didn’t I say practically the same thing, "I want love from you," or something like that? Tasha thought to herself. I lead him on (didn’t I?) then told him it never happened. How could I not have hurt him!

"I’m sorry Data," said Tasha, her voice muffled by her suit. She peeked her head out from behind her leg. "I shouldn’t have told you it never happened. That was really selfish of me, and I didn’t even think about how you felt about it." She felt slightly less guilty after apologizing.

Data sat up and looked at her for a moment. He said softly, "You did not hurt me."

"What?...How?...," Tasha sputtered. He had blind-sided her again; he still wouldn’t react the way he was supposed to, that is, the way she expected.

Data paused a moment, then said, "All you did was correct me. I thought it was something more, and I was wrong. I am grateful that you did not avoid the issue, leaving me to believe you felt something for me that you did not."

I don’t quite believe you, she thought, and I was avoiding it! An instant later, and without her permission, she said, "Maybe you weren’t wrong."

Data’s expression never changed. Somehow, though, Tasha felt as though he were looking right into her, as though she had suddenly captured his undivided attention. He looked at her that way for a second or two, then asked carefully, "I was not wrong? You did feel something for me?"

"I didn’t say that! I said maybe," she replied, wishing that at some point in her life she had learned the art of controlling her tongue. She started plucking at the poor, beleaguered blade of grass again. "I said maybe," she repeated, more to herself.

"I am right about this: humans rarely have sex casually, even if they think they do," Data noted, "and I believe you have confused yourself more than you have confused me." He laid back and started sniffing the air again.

Tasha continued plucking at the grass, thinking. He was probably right; that minor war had been going on longer than just today, though it settled down sometimes. She was loath to admit it, but she had been fighting with herself about Data from the first day she met him. She plucked at the grass again, this time pulling it apart. She began fiddling with the blade in an attempt to stop thinking. It was working, for the moment.

"May I ask you a personal question?" Data asked, completely breaking Tasha’s concentration on the torn grass.

"Yeah, I guess." She twirled the grass between her fingers, wishing that grasshopper would come back and distract Data. He was notorious for asking difficult questions, and she had a feeling this time was no exception.

"Do you think anyone would ever love me?"

She didn’t think she would have much trouble answering that question. "I think so, yes."

Data glanced at her again, but because she was twirling the grass, she didn’t see it. In his usual direct manner he asked, "Do you think you could ever love me?"

Tasha stopped fiddling with the grass. She thought she’d gotten away without having to answer an extremely hard question. She was apparently dead wrong. "Me?" she postponed.

"Yes."

"Why? You want me to?"

"Yes."

She stared at Data almost incredulously. It was singularly impossible to believe that not only did he need someone to love him, but he wanted that someone to be her! Specifically! How could she have managed to get an emotionless Android to feel that way about her? Could he, at some unknown point along the line, fallen in love with her?

"Data, are you in love with me?"

He said plainly, "I cannot love."

"Then what can you do?" she asked, determined to get a straight answer.

He looked a bit confused. "What do you mean?" he asked.

"Don’t start dodging the question. You do too many things that only irrational, feeling people do to be completely logical. What makes you do those things? What makes you want me to love you?"

"Your last question is easier to answer," Data said. "I think you trusted me not to hurt you, as those on Turkana IV did. You do not act toward me as others do; you are not condescending, and you do not become irritated with me so easily. And you did not become angry with me today." He thought for a brief moment, then added, "I trust you not to...hurt me, the way others have in the past."

Tasha smiled a little, saying, "That sounds more like an answer to question number one. I still want to know what makes you do irrational things."

With sounds that no human could make, sounds like bird song and humming, Data said, "qehsehth," he then continued in his normal voice, "there is no other word I know for it."

"Keseth?" Tasha’s brow furrowed for a second as she tried to remember something. She shook her head as if to clear it, saying, "Those sounds reminded me of something. I guess it’s just déjà vu."

Before she could say anything further, Data said, "You have not answered my question."

"All right, all right! Just give me a minute!" He had answered her truthfully, about things that he very likely never spoke of to anyone else; over the course of their conversation, she had gotten the feeling that he was a far more private person than he let on. It was only fair that she be honest with him, even if it meant she had to be honest with herself. For a few minutes, the minor war escalated, then ended abruptly. The minor war was won, and she found that she wanted to answer him honestly because of it.

She crawled over on hands and knees to look at him directly. "I could," she said, touching his face and hair, stroking them with her fingertips. He was cool like water, and soft; his hair was softer than human hair. "I could fall in love with you so easily, and furthermore," she smiled, "I want to."

When he heard Tasha’s answer Data smiled. Perhaps he had been waiting all his life to hear what she said. He had such a beautiful smile, and it was so rare. She bent her head down a little and kissed him gently. After a moment, she moved back and looked him in the eye. She smiled and said, "You have to promise not to tell anyone, though."

"You have my word."

Just as Tasha moved to kiss Data again, that little nymph grasshopper made its spectacularly disruptive entrance. It jumped into Tasha’s ear, scaring her half to death. On reflex she leapt to her feet and started scratching at her ear. Several Russian obscenities were heard, most directed at grasshopperkind in general and some of them at her blond hair for not being long enough to keep grasshoppers out of her ears. Data stood up and looked into Tasha’s ear to see if the grasshopper was stuck and to try to get it out. It wasn’t in need of help; it crawled out and hopped onto Data’s shoulder. Tasha glared daggers at the little thing, but it cleaned its antennae, oblivious.

Geordi jogged up, breathing hard from the practice. He slowed down, then walked up to talk to Data and Tasha. He turned to look at Tasha, asking, "Where have you been? I looked all over for you before practice. I wouldn’t let Worf and Riker start the game without you, especially since you’re the one who dragged me into it in the first place!"

Tasha scratched her ear again, then said, "I’m sorry. I got caught up talking to Data and I lost track of time. I never knew grasshoppers could be so involving."

Geordi’s jaw dropped slightly. He closed his mouth, then opened it again. He finally managed to get out, "You guys talked about grasshoppers all this time?"

Data was his normal inscrutable self, and he didn’t say anything. Tasha answered, with the slightest irritation, "Yes, we did. They’re fascinating little things."

Geordi looked from Data to Tasha. He could see she wasn’t being exactly honest, but he didn’t pry. "They must be more interesting than I thought. Data, you’ll have to tell me about them after the game. Come on, Tasha. You know how Worf gets when he has to wait to send someone to Sickbay." Geordi waited until Tasha started after him, then turned and started off to the game.

Tasha followed Geordi, turning for a moment and saying to Data, "We can finish our conversation later, OK?"

"Yes," he answered. When she and Geordi were gone, Data sat down and returned to watching the grasshopper on his shoulder.

* * *

Captain Jean-Luc Picard paced. And paced.

What else was there to do? He had finished his Earl Gray some indeterminate time ago; time seemed to sit still in this black, featureless place. He knew time had not stopped in reality. His own human sense of time was completely subjective and it was subjecting him to endless moments dragging on to more endless moments.

He paced some more. Picard could wait with the best, but even his considerable patience was wearing thin. Pondering how Will or Worf would react to this sort of waiting gave him some perverse amusement, but it was short lived. He knew his Number One was most likely running himself to distraction trying to find out what happened.

Pace, pace. Just as he was about to call out for who ever or whatever was behind this, Data or Q or who ever else, he felt the almost subliminal vibration of the ship moving. He wondered where the ship was headed, but without even so much as a window and without Data or who ever saying so, he had no way of knowing.

For an instant he caught sight of the person claiming to be Data, just a flash, and he was rubbing his arm like he was in pain. Then Data held his arm out, his hand clenched to a fist, almost as if to ward off a blow, and Picard felt in the air the vilest sense of hate he had sensed in a long time. Then Data disappeared again, and Picard heard something dark laughing in his mind...

* * *

Commander Riker and Counselor Troi shared a surprisingly delicious meal of phaser-roast furry animal. What ever it was, it sure did taste good. Troi glanced up from her meal to look at Ensign Sier. She seemed to be enjoying her rather bloody furry animal.

When all the animals were dead, including the Kwi, some Vstrak climbed down into the pit. They leaned over and entwined some dead animals in their arms and passed them up to other waiting Vstrak. The Vstrak above slithered away, to go outside the feasting dome. When the Vstrak in the pit came to the two Kwi, they carefully bundled them in brightly colored cloth. Now protected from the Kwi’s fur, they gathered them up and passed them out of the pit.

Riker stood up and walked over to the Vstrak. He spotted Pljkol’trwzor and asked it, "What are you doing?"

Pljkol’trwzor paused in its work and answered Riker. "These animals and the Kwi are left outside for the other animals and other Kwi. There are many, many scavenging and carrion eating animals on Vs, and the Kwi need the remains back so that more Kwi can be made."

Before Riker could respond, his communicator beeped. "Enterprise to Commander Riker."

Riker slapped his communicator, looking up at the ceiling. "Riker here. What is it, Data?"

"The ravenship has begun moving again. It is right now in orbit of Vs. Do you wish to return to the Enterprise?" Data explained over the comm channel.

"Yes, in just a moment. I need to take my leave of the Vstrak. I’ll signal when."

"Yes, sir. Enterprise out." Riker tapped his communicator off. He then walked over to Rjklyph, who had removed its drape for the work of removing the dead animals.

Rjklyph straightened at Riker’s approach, its tentacles flowing as though under water. Riker said, "I wanted to thank you for the feast, and for the stories and especially the information about your ships. I hope we can use it. Can we keep in touch with you, in case we need further assistance?"

Rjklyph answered, "Of course. All help will be given that can be. The other Vstrak ship has been checked; no one has taken the ship. Do keep in touch; the Vstrak will consider accepting other visitors from the Federation. Good-bye, Raaaikr." Rjklyph returned to its work without another word.

Riker motioned to Troi and Sier to follow him out of the feasting dome. When they went outside, Riker signaled for transport and they were beamed up.

The ravenship wheeled in space, once, then sped toward the Enterprise.

"The Away Team has been beamed up," Worf boomed. "The ravenship is continuing on its intercept course."

"Red Alert, shields up," Data ordered calmly. He heard a low growl from Worf; apparently Worf wished everyone were as hot-blooded as he. Data ignored it. "Evasive maneuvers, Ensign McKnight."

"Aye, sir," replied McKnight. She punched into her Conn console several commands, maneuvering the Enterprise for so many evasions anyone but the stoutest hostile captain would be hopelessly confused. Not so the ravenship. "The ship’s still on an intercept course. We can’t shake it."

Before anyone could react further, the ravenship shot toward the Enterprise. Its beak opened wide, then it seemed to engulf the Enterprise. Suddenly the stars disappeared.

Geordi looked up from the Bridge Engineering station. "What the hell...?" he breathed.

A heaviness settled on the Bridge. The air seemed thick, moist. The light dimmed; it was almost as though the thickness strangled the power from the light. The customary sounds of the Bridge all fell as though weighed down by the suffocating heaviness. Wisps of dark, thick fog floated, bulky but weightless. Voices, like those heard from a distance, through water and rock, filtered through the fog. One voice confused another, sounding over and under the others until all were a hopeless tangle of whispered sound without meaning. Everyone slowed down; the heaviness affected them as it did everything else. Even memory seemed weighted; it became hard for some to remember where they were or what they were doing. So much did the heaviness affect some that they sat dazed, as though caught in one eternal instant with no past and no future.

Data stood up, listening intently to the far-away voices. He made no move; the voices seemed to entrance him.

Geordi looked at each member of the Bridge crew and found that only he and Worf retained a semblance of normality. Everyone else was somewhere in La La Land.

"We aren’t in Kansas anymore." Geordi’s whispered voice fell dead, carried no where in the oppressive heaviness.

In a hurry and on his way to the Bridge, Will Riker slammed face first into a tree.

Riker fell backward, a few choice expletives escaping his lips. "What the hell is a tree doing here?!"

Someone stood behind Riker. The person stepped to his side and offered a hand. Will took it, expecting the cool scaliness of the Deitang, but finding a warm Human hand. Riker looked up and saw the face that belonged to the hand. He fell down again.

The person was Will Riker -- from more than five years ago. His beardless face held no expression. "Go to the Bridge," the young Riker said.

Riker instinctively knew then that the situation was far, far worse than he had imagined.

* * *

The voices troubled Data. So many of them he had heard before; so many had he heard only in his mind. He heard the words; the voices, the sounds; and he understood them. Thousands spoke of things never to be seen in mortal memory; tens of thousands spoke of things new and strange. Data wondered if he was the only one aware of the voices; he fervently hoped others heard them, for if not then he was losing his mind. A year ago the thought wouldn’t even have entered his mind, but after his experiences with the nightmares and hallucinations, especially considering they were not delusional at all but rather a perfectly sane if urgent expression of a previously unknown sense, Data knew that he could lose touch with reality again. Perhaps without warning. Data could find nothing more disconcerting than the thought that he was psychotic and absolutely lucid simultaneously. He sometimes wondered if that worried his companions at all, that he was both sane and insane at the same time.

Data turned to look at Geordi, his expression one of acute awareness of something that wasn’t easily identifiable. "Do you hear them?" he asked. His voice only carried a few inches before it lost all strength.

Geordi shrugged as if to say he hadn’t heard Data’s question. He got up and walked down the ramp to meet Data. "I didn’t hear you. Everything seems to fall dead in the air." Geordi’s voice sounded weak and hollow in the thick air, but otherwise he seemed unaffected by the strange atmosphere.

Data looked out at the air for a moment, then repeated his original question. "Do you hear them? The voices?"

Geordi nodded. "Yeah...yeah, I do. I can’t understand them."

Data looked toward the viewscreen. Such a look of relief passed over his features that it caused Geordi some concern. He said, "Hey, what’s wrong?"

"I thought I might be losing my mind...," Data spoke quietly, as though he were loath to say what he did. He added in explanation, "Many of the voices are such that I know no living person outside myself has ever heard them. I have never actually heard them before now, but I know what they sound like." Data suddenly looked to his right, toward the Briefing Room doors.

Geordi followed Data’s gaze and saw something quite unexpected. There were shapes there, shadowy and indistinct. Most were humanoid, but some were altogether new. Some displaced the fog while others moved through it. More and more appeared, all around the Bridge.

Worf looked ponderously at his console. He slowly spoke, his resonant voice carrying only slightly farther than the rest. "Reports coming in from all over the ship about strange occurrences. Fog, trees, life forms, and this heaviness. This isn’t just happening on the Bridge." He bowed his head for a moment, then shook it as if fighting back sleep. "According to external sensors, there is nothing outside our hull. No ship, no planet, no stars." Worf’s expression clouded; he joined the others in their dazed lack of reality.

Data observed Worf for a moment, thinking. Geordi asked, "Do you think it’s Q?"

"It may be, but I do not think so. It is not his style to play with us from afar. It may be another Q," Data responded. He tilted his head slightly, as if to listen more closely to some unheard noise. "There are strong interphase and subspace fields."

"I don’t see any subspace fields," Geordi replied, lifting his hand to touch his VISOR in a gesture much like rubbing his eyes to double check he was seeing correctly.

The shapes continued to form, some with far more substance than others. One such shape stood directly before the viewscreen. Data set his gaze on the shape as it resolved itself more and more until it was recognizable as a stocky female humanoid. Her face was as bright as a star, so bright that everyone but Data covered their eyes. Data heard one voice among the many, more distinct than the rest for just a few moments. No one else understood the voice, so lost was it among the others.

"Messenger," it said, in a voice like Data’s own but higher in pitch, "we wait for you. We wait for another time and another place." She turned and faded to an ethereal shape and fell into the mist.

"Masaka?" Data asked, concerned and fascinated at the same time.

Geordi looked sharply at Data. He exclaimed, "Was that who that was? Boy, we don’t need any more of her!"

Data gazed at where Masaka had stood, then turned to Geordi. "I do not believe Masaka has anything to do with this. The only places Masaka exists are in the Asakan storage library and in my memory. Both quantities are known; the library is stationary where we found it, and I am incapable of generating a tangible representation of Masaka in and of myself. It is therefore unlikely that Masaka has any hand in this."

Geordi pondered the space before the viewscreen, his face reflecting consternation. "We need some answers."

"I agree," Data responded, "but I see no other alternative but to wait for the answers to present themselves."

Deanna Troi turned back to find that Will hadn’t followed her into the Turbolift. She was already on her way to the Bridge. Before she could tell the Turbolift to take her back to Riker’s location, she saw several ethereal forms appear in the car. She watched in shock as they grew progressively more solid and distinct. Captain Picard, Tasha Yar, and Data had joined her.

Deanna stood there for a moment, frozen. How could this be? Troi sensed nothing from the others; they couldn’t even be so much as ghosts. Nevertheless, they stood before her.

Captain Picard spoke first, his voice sounding the same as ever, accent and all. "Hold," he ordered the Turbolift. "Deanna, I’m fine. Don’t worry about me. Tell Will not to worry either."

Troi asked with trepidation, "Who are you?"

Data answered her. "I am Data," he said, as if his identity were patently obvious, which, all things being equal, it would have been. But all things were not equal.

Troi looked back and forth from one illusion to another. "You can’t be. Who are you really?"

Tasha smiled. "Remember to ask Will what he thinks of immortality. The question just might come up."

Emotions from all sides tore at Deanna. She didn’t realize how much she missed her late friend, how much old hurt and happiness her voice would bring out, but this image, no matter that it looked and sounded like Tasha, was only an image. Deanna Troi sensed nothing behind it. That caused pain, but more it made her angry. Someone was using Tasha’s image for some unknown purpose, as if she were a puppet.

Tasha reached out a hand and took Deanna’s. "I’m sorry you’re hurting, Deanna. I’m...we’re sorry for everything. I wish things could be different. You can’t imagine how much I wish things could be different. But the phoenix has to burn to live again, and the fire has to consume more than the phoenix." She sounded like she thought everything she said made perfect sense. Then, almost as an afterthought, she added, "Follow the Raven, and let time take its course." Then the images began to disappear, becoming ether again. Deanna’s hand closed on nothing as Tasha’s became mist.

Troi wiped away a tear as she watched the images float away as if they had never been there. She wondered what exactly Tasha had meant by her cryptic statements; nothing the images had said made much sense at all. She stood in the motionless Turbolift for a moment, lost in thought. She came back to reality again and ordered the Turbolift back to pick up Will.

The heaviness on the Bridge continued, filling every corner and dulling senses. Thick fog thickened and the shadowy shapes continued to move about the Bridge, filling it with their unintelligible voices.

"What the hell is going on!" Geordi demanded, with as much authority as he could muster under the deadening weight of the air.

Almost as an answer, a shape began to solidify. It strode right past Geordi and stood before Data. Its shape resolved further and became recognizable as Data’s brother, Lore. He stood there for a few moments, then he began to speak.

Lore spoke to Data alone; no other ears could understand his speech, even though his voice was audible to everyone. Lore’s spoken words mingled with inhuman sounds, "Ehlianihsglehf vehzhieng’nii, sohrzehn, sohriizehn, zlai’azahrmoh?"

Data’s eyes widened. He looked back at the shadowy figures, then back at Lore. His expression confused, he said, "Tehhikei? Sarohjohmnia?"

Lore laughed, then shoved Data back into the captain’s chair. He moved in close to Data, leaning down so his face was two or three inches away. He smiled, not unkindly. It struck Geordi as odd that Lore would have such a striking smile. Lore spoke in Standard this time, saying, "No, no, not really. I just wanted to prove it’s me. I do know exactly what is happening here, however. I understand you better than you know, and see we aren’t so different. Someone gutted us both." Lore paused a moment and shook his head. "You probably don’t quite understand that term. Carhzhohtehth? Is that the right word?"

"Ehzhohtehth." Data answered simply. "There is no such thing as carhzhohtehth."

Geordi whispered under his breath, "Ishoteth?"

Lore smiled again. "No admission and no denial. How like you." His expression changed radically, now reflecting his own emotional discord. Lore paused a moment, glancing up at the skylight, then looked back at Data. "I love you, dear brother, with a passion, but I hate you just as much. That’s why I’m going to enjoy this. I’ll probably loathe myself for it too." Lore stood up quickly, then took a step back. He began to fade into the fog, just as Masaka had.

Data looked at his brother, unsure what to think. "What are you doing here? What is happening?"

"Oh, I’m just adding some spice to the soup." Lore ignored the second question.

Data looked at the floor a second, then said, "I am sorry, Lore."

Just before he became a shadow again, Lore answered his brother. "I know you are."

Data sat there for a long while, thinking. Geordi went and sat down in the counselor’s chair next to Data. He looked a concerned and disappointed at the same time. He asked, "Are you OK?"

Data continued looking a nothing. "I think he gave us some of the answers we seek."

Geordi grumbled inwardly. He found it most annoying when Data sidestepped questions. He found it doubly annoying that Data was so good at it. Sure, Data, go ahead and bring up a more important subject, like the safety of the ship or something like that, Geordi thought sarcastically. He sat there for a second, looking at his Android friend, then said, "I didn’t gather that. He just sounded threatening to me."

Data looked at Geordi, his voice serious. "Who ever is in that ship, who ever kidnapped the captain, that person has done these things for a reason. I do not know what the reason is, but I know this: it concerns me in some fashion. Why else would that person create the voices of people that only I know?"

Geordi nodded, seeing Data’s point. He added, "Or have images addressing you alone. What was that language anyway? You understood it."

"It is my own native language. I doubt anyone speaks it outside Lore and myself."

"Uh huh," commented Geordi. "What did he say?"

Data looked at Geordi. He answered, "It is difficult to translate. It is something he said to me in my quarters when he found that I carried the memories of the Omicron Theta colonists."

In a calm-before-the-storm tone, Geordi asked, "Were you alone when he said it?"

"Yes."

They sat there in silence for a moment. The one responsible for these occurrences was obviously powerful; it was equally apparent he or she had no qualms with reading someone’s entire life story and using it to cause extreme and apparently pointless havoc. Q could do it in his sleep, but, for all his bluster, he was largely harmless. What if, however, it was another Q, or something more dangerous? "This is serious," Geordi understated.

"I agree," Data replied.

In an almost light tone, Geordi commented, "First the captain’s kidnapped on a horse, then Masaka stops by to say hello, and now Lore. Curiouser and curiouser."

"Indeed."

Nazzi ad Sier hissed. The Deitang race as a whole didn’t mind the unknown even an iota as much as the Human; it was surprises that rattled their nerves. Two Commander Rikers standing in front of her qualified as a surprise. She hissed again.

"Go to the Bridge," the young Riker repeated.

The familiar, bearded Riker sat dumbstruck for a second, then accepted the hand Ensign Sier offered. She helped him up, then said, "You need watching. All types of life forms have been appearing all over the ship." Sier sniffed the air with her long tongue, then said in a low tone, "I feel there is something malicious here."

"I think you’re right. Something’s not kosher," Riker agreed.

"Go to the Bridge! What are you waiting for?" The young Riker’s voice was full of impatience.

"Who are you?" Riker asked.

"Isn’t it obvious? I’m you! Now go up to the Bridge and follow the Raven!" The younger Riker vanished without warning. Even the Holodeck had more decency than that young Riker. At least the Holodeck made noise when it dissolved holographs.

Deanna Troi strode up to Riker and Sier. She put a hand on the tree, then said, "I just saw Captain Picard, Data, and Tasha on the Turbolift." She sounded subdued. "Tasha, an image of her, said something about a phoenix and she also asked me to ask you what you thought of immortality. Captain Picard said he was fine and to tell you so."

"That’s odd," he said to himself. Riker looked at her for a moment, then added, "I think we’d better get to the Bridge. I have a feeling that’s where the action is."

The fog fell away and the heaviness lifted. Worf stirred, lifting his ridged head from Tactical. He growled some Klingon obscenities at who or what ever had caused him to sleep at his post. Ensign McKnight suddenly sat up, nearly wrenching her neck. She rubbed it, looking around at the fast clearing Bridge. Other Bridge officers began waking up as well.

Data looked at the viewscreen, then turned to Worf. "Confirm the ship is gone."

Worf studied Tactical, then reported. "Confirmed. The ship has moved off, just at the edge of our short-range sensors. It is not moving."

The Turbolift doors opened, revealing Commander Riker, Counselor Troi, and Ensign Sier. Riker exited the car and strode down the ramp. The others followed. When they reached the bottom of the ramp, Data and Geordi joined them. "Has anything unusual occurred here?" Riker quickly glanced around the Bridge and found nothing out of the ordinary. Perhaps his doppelganger had lied to him.

"Oh, I’d say ‘unusual’ is an understatement," Geordi answered.

Data added, "After the ravenship engulfed us, a heaviness--" Data unexpectedly spun around and raised his arms as if to ward off a blow. A blur followed a sharp sound, then Data fell to his knees. He held his head as if he’d just acquired a remarkable headache. Deanna stood motionless, her eyes narrowed in concentration.

Geordi leaned down and asked Data, "Are you all right? What happened?"

Data looked blankly at Geordi for a moment, then stated calmly, "Do not speak to me. I order you stay away from me."

Geordi’s jaw dropped. He tried to say something, but nothing was coming out. After a moment, he said loudly, "That’s outrageous! Are you crazy!?" Will Riker was equally shocked, but Troi continued in deep concentration.

With an edge to his voice that stated he would brook no argument, Data replied, "Leave. If you do not, I will have you escorted off the Bridge."

With a slight tinge of hurt in his voice, Geordi asked, "You’re serious, aren’t you?"

Data’s only answer was in his expression. Serious and pleading at the same time, it caused Geordi to step back. He didn’t want to leave his friend, but he knew that Data never did anything without good reason. He was sure that Data must have a reason now as well, but Geordi had no idea what it was.

When Data’s expression slipped into tense panic, when he raked his pale hands through his immaculate hair, when he savagely pulled his head down nearly to the floor, when he choked out some incoherent noise, Geordi made one of the hardest decisions of his life. Against all instinct and all feeling, Geordi backed away and left the bridge. He wanted to stay and help his friend, to do anything but leave, but Data had a reason to want him away. And somehow Geordi knew it was a damn good reason, too.

The turbolift doors closed, sparing Geordi Data’s stare, now hollow and cruel.

Will Riker stalked into the Observation Lounge, followed by Deanna Troi and Ensign Sier. Leaning an arm on the window, Riker looked out the thick transparent aluminum, trying to see the ravenship, but only finding stars. He turned to Troi, and asked, "Do you know what just happened on the Bridge? I was going to ask Data, but it looked like he wasn’t in the mood to talk." He added wryly, "Eat me alive, maybe, but not talk." He shivered, knowing that his joke hadn’t struck very far from the truth. He had never before seen such a chilling expression. He had asked Worf to watch Data, but he wondered how much good it would do.

The counselor put her hands together and rested them on the smooth black table. "When Data spun around, I sensed something familiar, very familiar. It was gone before I could tell what it was. There is something masking it, preventing me from sensing it further." She concentrated, trying to remember everything about the brief instant of familiarity. "I can’t place it. I have sensed it before."

Riker looked out the window again for a moment. After a moment, he strode over to the small viewscreen. He thumbed it on, then said, "Riker to LaForge."

A few seconds passed, then the screen changed from the UFP logo to Geordi’s sullen face. "Yeah, Commander?" he replied without his usual buoyancy.

"I need to know exactly what happened on the Bridge before I got there," Riker said. "Tell me everything."

La Forge proceeded to relay the events on the Bridge after the ravenship swallowed the Enterprise. He explained about the heavy fog, the walking shapes, and the strange voices. He told Riker about every word he said or heard.

Riker listened intently. When Geordi finished, Will commented, "This doesn’t look good for the home team."

"Yeah, that’s what I thought. Come to think of it, the last time Data was worried about checking out was when Masaka and her buddies graced us with their presence. Do think something like that happened again?" Geordi said.

"I don’t know. Maybe," Riker responded.

Counselor Troi added, "I don’t sense anything from Data. It may be an internal problem or external influence. With all that has happened so far, I would say external influence. If this is a situation similar to the one with Masaka, then Data would be subject to both influences."

Sier flicked out her forked tongue briefly. In her slow tone, she said, "I don’t know what Masaka smells like, but she cannot possibly smell as evil as this. There is something malicious here."

Riker turned to face the Deitang. He knew that the Deitang had an uncanny talent for smelling the stronger emotions and general mindset of certain types of life, something a little like the way a dog can smell fear, but on a more sophisticated and intelligent level. He wasn’t about to discount this sense just because there was apparently nothing that would give off that sort of scent. "You mentioned that before. Do you know where the scent is coming from? Could you pinpoint it?"

Sier hissed and grimaced, exposing several extremely sharp teeth. She hissed again. "No. I smelled it down in the Transporter room, the same as here. It is pervasive, as if something is rotting in the walls."

Not a pleasant image. Riker looked at the black table for a moment, then turned to face each person in turn. "This is what we know: who or what ever is responsible for kidnapping the captain has the ability to read all of us like cheap novels, manipulate thinking and actions, create extremely life-like images, move anything through duranium walls, and preserve life in a vacuum without any obvious mechanism. Furthermore, this being is apparently evil and familiar or reminiscent of something familiar. Does this sound like anyone or anything we have ever encountered before?"

The four thought in silence. Deanna was the first to speak. "No, Will. The only thing I have encountered with this power is Q. If the being responsible is as evil as Ensign Sier says, I would say Armus, except that he is not this powerful." She sounded displeased.

Riker thought a moment, then asked, "Do you think the Vstrak have enough telepathic power to affect our thinking?"

"No," Troi stated without reservation, "their telepathy is limited to communication and sensing presence."

"Hmmm. The Vstrak very likely couldn’t kidnap the captain anyway. Assuming we are only dealing with one being or race. We could be dealing with another Q," Riker observed. He tapped his communicator, saying to the air, "Riker to Guinan."

"Guinan here. What is it Commander?" came the response.

"You may have noticed some odd happenings on board," Riker commented.

"Yes, I have. Two animals that looked like sehlats strode up to my bar and cordially asked for wine not too long ago," Guinan replied.

Riker thought that at some other time, that would have been an interesting sight. "We were wondering if you knew whether Q was behind this."

There was silence for a few seconds. "I don’t think so."

Riker drummed his fingers on the table. He thought for a second or two, then asked, "Guinan, do you know of any being with Q-like powers and a serious mean streak?"

A few more seconds of silence, then the bartender spoke again. "The Urulak reportedly have powers comparable to Q’s, and they do have a bad reputation, but their dictatorship is entirely in the Delta Quadrant. It would be very unlikely they would be out this far yet. There is also the Wirt and the High Guard of Char, though another, decent Q holds them out of this dimension."

"Huh. They don’t sound like suspects," Riker said, wondering at how little the Federation knew about the galaxy. He had never heard of any of those races. "Thank you, Guinan."

"Anytime, Commander." Guinan signed off, leaving the officers to their thoughts.

Troi observed, "You know, Will, if the being we are dealing with can dull the thoughts of the entire Bridge crew, it is certainly possible that the familiarity I sense is a guise to trick us. This being could be convincing me that I have sensed it before when I haven’t. It may be purposefully trying to confuse us."

Riker rubbed his eyes. Things were complicated enough without second-guessing their own senses. "I feel like someone’s playing with us, leading us around just to see us go. It’s damn frustrating."

Ensign Sier looked as though she were about to say something when she hissed loudly. She squeezed her eyes shut and wrinkled her long, thin nose as if she were in pain. An instant later, Riker and Troi slammed their hands over their ears as an intense, piercing shriek reached them. After a few intolerable seconds, the shriek downgraded to an incoherent howling. After an instant to recover, all three officers ran out to the Bridge. Geordi looked out from the viewscreen, wondering what was happening.

Riker, Troi, and Sier entered the Bridge and stopped dead in their tracks. It was Data who was howling. He had begun slowly tearing the pale skin off his lower left arm, exposing his bright gold exoskeleton and allowing his yellow blood to trickle down his fingers. His expression and his voice couldn’t seem to settle on one thing. Across his face passed any number of conflicting expressions, from outrage to horror to disbelief to disgust, and from there back to incoherence. It was exceedingly difficult and painful to watch. Troi averted her gaze while Riker and Sier stood dumbstruck. The rest of the Bridge crew reacted in a similar vein. Everyone shared a feeling of helplessness, the hurt frustration of knowing that someone was in pain and they could do nothing to stop it.

Worf, with his phaser ready, started down the ramp to where Data sat, but before he came within arms reach, Data turned and with a vicious look, made a low, loud noise in Worf’s direction. This was no ordinary noise; the sheer force of the soundwaves knocked Worf off his feet. He fell backward and hit his head on the horseshoe rail, knocking him unconscious. The burly Lieutenant Arsad called Sickbay while Ensign Sier manned Tactical. A few seconds later, Worf stirred. Worf stood up in time for Arsad to inform Dr. Crusher, who ordered him down to Sickbay.

As Worf reluctantly headed for the Turbolift, Data stared at him in surprise, the viciousness in his expression draining away. He looked down at his torn arm, then up at Commander Riker. His expression was calm and reasonable, in every way perfectly normal. He tried to say something, but the sound came out as a strangled gurgle. He lowered his head and stared at nothing in the vicinity of the Conn chair. He sat very still and silent, almost as if he was standing on a razor’s edge where any slight movement would have him fall.

Riker moved slowly toward Data. Data’s eyes flashed, the tiny movement shattering his stillness. Riker stopped short; he held his breath, unsure if he was about to join Worf in temporary oblivion. Data stared at Riker for a few tense moments, then smiled wickedly. He looked back down at his arm and began tearing it again. The rest of Data’s body returned to that inhuman stillness, without reaction and without expression.

Riker wiped his beard and looked down at his feet. He fidgeted, looking to the side and then the ceiling. It was impossibly hard to see his friend in such a state. It almost seemed as though Data had gone mad. Data was enough ‘there’ to make the possibility a real one. Surely to damage an Android to the point of insanity was small change to someone who could abduct a person off a ship using only a horse. He turned to look at Data again. With a tremor in his voice, he asked, "Why are you doing this? What happened to you?"

Data squeezed his eyes shut, reacting strongly to Riker’s tone. He barked something utterly incoherent. He looked up at Riker again, his expression wondering if Riker could understand. When Riker in turn reacted with more concern and pained compassion, Data started laughing. He tossed his head back so hard was his laughter. He sounded as one might when experiencing something intensely pleasant and equally humorous. Without warning, Data stopped laughing. He put his hands to his temples, spreading yellow fluid all over the left side of his face. He looked physically ill and nauseous. He lay down on his side, curled up half way. "Translate back," he said weakly, "you know me better than this."

Riker blinked at the cryptic statement. He knew instinctively that there had been neither madness nor influence in Data’s words. That Data had apparently spoken in complete rationality made Riker pay attention, but hadn’t helped in his understanding. Riker glanced up at Troi, who looked equally confused. Deanna carefully walked over to Riker. Riker whispered, "Translate what?"

"I don’t know," Troi whispered back.

"You would not," Data said in a venomous tone. He became very still again, a lifeless statue except for the yellow blood trickling down his arm.

Ensign Sier hissed loudly, then said, "The ship is moving off! It is on a course heading directly for Keleia Sigma B."

Riker slowly walked over to the captain's chair and sat down. In the face of Data’s apparent insanity, the situation with the ravenship had slipped his mind. This whole situation was draining him. It was frustrating and impossible. He collected himself and ordered, "McKnight, match speed and follow the ravenship."

"Aye sir," came the subdued reply.

"Commander, do you agree I am proficient on the violin?" Data asked, his tone reasonable and friendly. He was still lying on the floor, and he seemed totally unaware of it.

Riker glanced over at Data. "Yeah, I agree, but what does that have to do with anything?"

"Metaphor. It is important that you know. He also plays well," Data answered, hanging no more importance on his words than he would if he were making small talk. He laughed again, short and cold. After that, he appeared to sleep.

Riker laid his head in his hands. "He also plays well." What in the hell does that mean? The craziness of this entire situation was growing in leaps and bounds. He couldn’t imagine things getting any worse than they were, but he knew, he felt it in his bones, that things would, in fact, get worse. A kidnapped captain, a powerful mystery being, a mad Android, meaningless messages, strange visitors, and a partridge in a pear tree. All he needed was a fleet of Borg and a doomsday weapon to make his week complete.

* * *

The door chime woke Tasha Yar from a sound sleep. She rubbed her eyes and asked for the time. The excessively pleasant computer voice answered, "Oh two hundred hours." She growled, thinking that if the person at her door were anyone less than the Captain, she would tear his or her arms off. Muttering Russian curses, she got out of bed and stomped to the door. She hated it when someone woke her in the middle of the night. As she unlocked the door and opened it, she snapped, "What is it!"

An empty corridor greeted her.

Tasha poked her head out and looked down the hall to her right, and finding no one, she looked left. The hall was vacant. She stepped out and walked a short distance to the corner. She peered down that hall, and found it empty as well. She shook her head and grumbled mightily, then turned to walk back to her quarters. As she walked the short distance, she began to feel the presence of someone else. She spun around, convinced that someone was behind her. There was no one there. She slowly turned back around, looking over her shoulder at the empty corridor. She stopped, and as she was thinking about what to do next, she felt something like soft wind brush against her. She started and called out, "Who’s there?"

Out of the wind came a whispered voice, like a bird’s. "Daniel you may call me," it said.

She hit her communicator and called for security to inform them there was an intruder on board the Enterprise. All she got was the dissonant chirp of a dead comm line. She moved to try the comm panel on the corridor wall, but the wind stopped her movement.

"You are dreaming, Tasha. Do not worry about the ship; there is nothing on board that is not usually on board," the air said.

"Dreaming," she said. She looked around the corridor, thinking to herself that this was the most vivid dream she had ever had. She looked askance at where she thought the wind might be, unsure whether to believe it or not.

"You may believe me. You may always; I rarely find it necessary to outright lie."

"Your name is Daniel?" she asked. Something about the name was familiar beyond that it was a common Terran name. For a moment, she thought it was déjà vu, but she knew it was not. If she really was dreaming, then perhaps her mind was playing tricks on her.

"No. I only gave you that name so you would have something to call me. I think you have forgotten me. Do you want to remember me?" the thin air said in the bird’s voice.

"Yeah. If I don’t, it’ll bug me for the rest of the night and then I won’t get any sleep. Don’t you hate it when something’s caught on the tip of your tongue?"

Tasha almost felt the thin air turn in some invisible gesture. It said, "No. I do not have that problem. I have yet to forget anything." The wind solidified into a dark, humanoid shape, one that the light would not touch.

Suddenly Tasha realized who the wind was. Her memories of Turkana IV had dimmed a great deal over the years, which in most cases was no great loss, but apparently she had forgotten some good things as well. Now Daniel’s dark shape reminded her of a dimly remembered question that she had always wanted to ask, but could never remember who or why she wanted to ask. "How do you make it so the light won’t touch you?" she asked, now that she had the chance and before she could lose it.

"Manipulated subspace fields, something like holo-technology, but more sophisticated," Daniel answered easily.

Daniel’s dark silhouette contrasted sharply with the brightly-lit corridor, but Tasha could not make out any of his features. She could see that he had unruly hair and a long cloak, but nothing more. She wished he would just turn a little, so she could at least put a face to his name. She moved a little to the right, hoping to catch a glimpse of his profile, but he turned with her. She stopped and remarked, "You seem bent on making yourself mysterious. Why is that?"

"Mystery is good defense."

She narrowed her eyes at the dark figure. "What are you defending yourself against?"

"I did not say I am defending myself."

"Then what are you defending?"

His bird’s voice was calm and easy. "Now."

Tasha blinked a few times. "You’re defending now? As in the present?"

Daniel nodded.

Tasha huffed and said, "You aren’t making much sense."

Daniel paused for a moment, then said, "Someday you will understand what I say. For now I am content to leave it a mystery." Something in the sound of his bird-like voice gave the impression that he was smiling.

Tasha scratched her head in a gesture of mild frustration. If she was dreaming, then it didn’t matter what Daniel said to her. Everything he said would be out of her imagination and she would wake up irritated because none of her questions would really be answered. Daniel was a fifteen-year-old mystery that had been brooding in the back of her mind, and now it would be a mystery that she remembered. Now it would be like an itch that she couldn’t scratch; it would be worse than having something stuck on the tip of one’s tongue! She grumbled to Daniel, "If I’m dreaming, it wouldn’t matter if you told me everything anyway."

Daniel tilted his head a little, still masking his features in his lightless silhouette. He said, "You are dreaming, but you are not imagining me. I am here, speaking to you in your dream. Everything I have said is out of my mouth and is as trustworthy as I am. You did not imagine me in Turkangorod, and you are not imagining me now."

Tasha’s expression changed in sudden alarm. She knew he must be a true telepath to accomplish such a feat as invading her dream and talking to her. She had a deep-running distrust of true telepathy. She never liked the idea that someone could know her thoughts without her awareness or permission. She liked to keep her inner thoughts on the inside, to keep herself as much to herself as possible. True telepaths had the capacity to violate her privacy and it seemed as though Daniel was doing just that. She backed up a few steps, saying in a loud voice, "What!! You’re in my head? Get out! Get out!"

"Tasha, listen. You do not understand!"

Tasha growled, "What don’t I understand? You are in my dream, and I want you out!"

Daniel carefully shook his head. "You are dreaming, but I am not in your dream the way you think I am. I am on the outside, speaking to you--"

Tasha interrupted him loudly, "Then you are on the ship!" She reached over to hit her communicator but Daniel grabbed her arm, preventing her from calling security. His hand was colder than she remembered.

"I belong here! I have been here longer than you have! No one will find an intruder because there is no intruder!" Daniel said, somewhat exasperated.

Tasha yanked her arm out of Daniel’s icy hand. She glowered at his dark form, trying to understand. He seemed to be telling the truth. If she was dreaming, then it wouldn’t matter if she called security. There could be a flock of Beepbeep birds searching for bloodletter flowers all over the ship and she couldn’t do a thing about it. She couldn’t figure out how Daniel could be in her dream and be outside it as well, nor did she know how he could belong on the Enterprise. Surely the crew, or the ship's sensors, would have noticed such an unusual being. "What are you, anyway? How could you belong on the Enterprise? No one has ever seen you."

Daniel’s form suddenly became that of a Terran snowy owl. "They have seen me but they just do not realize it. I am not dangerous to the ship; I have been here for months and I assure you, had I wished to endanger this ship in that time, I could have. I have decided that now is the best time to talk to you, and it is your only chance to speak with me in this way; in no other meeting will I again answer to the name of Daniel."

Tasha shook her head. She couldn’t imagine how Daniel had escaped the notice of the ship’s sensors. She supposed that there was no use in thinking about it now; when she woke up, she would know with certainty if there was any truth to Daniel’s statements. Even vivid dreams had to take their place as imaginings when she woke up. She sighed heavily, then said, "Fine, fine. Say what you need to say."

The owl flicked one speckled white wing, then turned its head slightly. Its huge yellow eyes stared up at Tasha. "I need to ask you some questions. They are personal, and some will be difficult to understand, but they are of extreme importance. Will you answer?"

Tasha sat down in the middle of the corridor. She drummed her fingers against the side of her head, thinking. She answered, "Only if you give me at least a hint about who or what you are."

The owl answered in Daniel’s trilling voice, "Would it be enough if I let you feel the shape of my real face? That would provide you with a clue as to what I am, or am not."

Tasha looked at the owl, experienced a fleeting bit of humor at the idea of talking to an owl, then said, "All right. I’ll answer your questions afterwards."

"I understand." The owl became a large, black void, much like the shadow Daniel had covered himself with when he stepped under the street lamp so long ago.

Tasha stood up, facing the darkness. She lifted her hand, then hesitated a moment. The idea of pawing a stranger’s face struck her as just a little weird. Daniel had offered, however, and she did want a hint about what he was or at least what he looked like, so she carefully extended her hand through the dark cloud at the level where she would expect to find his face. Her hand stopped on what must have been his chin. His face, as she had expected, was bitterly cold. She quickly felt his features, trying to get a sense of their shape before her fingers went numb. She discovered that his features in general suggested he was human or a humanoid, clean shaven with short hair, but nothing beyond that. His skin was just too cold. She pulled her hand away, feeling as if it had been frozen solid. She had no idea what race could be so cold; Data was cool enough, but downright hot in comparison to Daniel.

"Are you satisfied?" Daniel asked.

Tasha shook her hand in an attempt to warm it up. She commented under her breath, "I swear, you must be ten degrees below freezing." In a normal voice she answered, "Yeah. I guess you can’t be a Klingon."

"Not an Imperial Klingon at least. Now will you answer me?" he asked.

"I suppose so. You held up your end of the bargain."

"I usually do, but for you, always. First I must ask you if you trust me. Do you believe I will keep my promise to ensure your safety?"

Tasha squinted her eyes in confusion. She remembered when he had promised to keep her safe, but she had thought he had meant only for that night. She hadn’t given any thought to his assurance that he would keep the promise forever. "You promised to keep me safe forever, right?"

"Yes," Daniel answered simply.

"How could you do that? I believe you will try, but I don’t know how you could keep a promise like that. Nothing lasts forever, especially humans like me."

Daniel asked, "Do you trust Data--"

"What the hell does Data have to do with this?!" Tasha interrupted loudly.

Daniel continued unabated, "Do you trust him to know you? Would you ever let him know everything, everything about you?"

This was certainly a dream with much to glower over. Personal questions indeed, Tasha thought to herself. She was becoming quite angry with this Daniel. How could he possibly know about how she felt about Data if she and Data were the only ones who knew? Either someone else did know, or Daniel was a true telepath who was trespassing on private land. Tasha disliked that idea so much that she decided this was definitely a dream. If she woke up and found out she wasn’t dreaming then she would get mad. She asked with a steel edge to her voice, "Why do you want to know."

Daniel said, "You will not be so angry later; you will then know under what circumstances I am able to ask what I have. I want to know, to hear it from your own mouth, so that I may continue on my course. I actually do not have to ask; however, if I did not...," his voice trailed off. He seemed unable to find the words he needed to express himself properly. His dark form moved about a little, as if pacing. He stopped, and continued in his trilling voice, "If I did not, it would be unfair to you. You mean more to me than anything. You do not have to answer my question; it will be enough if you think about it, for now at least."

Tasha stood still, totally and utterly bewildered. There, standing before her, was perhaps the most confusing being she had ever met, if he really was, as he claimed, speaking to her in her dream. Most of what he said made little sense, and he apparently felt very strongly about her without any real reason. She had already decided that this was nothing but a dream, so in that vein this Daniel must be a part of her mind that was unbelievably confusing. But what if he was real? What then? "Why does it matter how much I trust Data?" she asked.

"Let me tell you something that will answer that for you," Daniel responded. His voice changed to sound more human and more alien at the same time, with unique sounds threading through his voice as he said, "Tehnehnehsehlehk."

It was the same word he had last said fifteen years ago, but somehow different. A brief feeling of familiarity accompanied the sounds, as if she had heard them more recently, but Tasha fell into some sort of trance before she could place it. A trance in a dream...how odd, Tasha thought to herself before she fell away completely.

Tasha started, sitting up in her bed. In her memory...there was a very large, slimy thing, waving like a dark tree that overpowered the rich blue of a cloudless sky full of tiny black spots. Scores of golden crabs running and little stones that caught fire. Black branches and a silver sea, and something darker than pitch that hurt like poison. And something flittering away, maybe the snowy owl. There was more, much more, but Tasha only recalled the slightest glimpses of what Daniel had told her. The rest of her dream stood out just as vividly as when she was in it. Her dream felt dream-like enough now, but it also felt real enough to make her wonder. All at once she shivered, uncomfortable with the idea that she might not have been dreaming. She asked the computer for the time, and it answered, "Oh two hundred thirty three hours."

Tasha yawned, but didn’t feel much like sleeping. "Not gonna get much rest now," she muttered in resignation as she threw off her covers and padded past her bedroom door into the next room. She went over to her wooden carving of a three-horned Denebian gazelle and reached behind it to retrieve a small item. She felt around until she found the small dagger. She pulled it out and looked it over, wondering why she had forgotten how it had come into her possession. That particular memory had probably been misplaced with most of everything else about Turkana IV that she gladly forgot. Now that she remembered almost everything about when she had first met Daniel, she thought this little dagger might provide her with a clue as to what he was. She turned the little dagger over in her hand and removed to crystal cover, careful not to touch the blade. She had used this dagger often enough to protect herself, and she had never become quite accustomed to its sharpness. She knew the black blade would cut through human flesh with vicious ease; she wondered if there might be a humanoid life form that the blade would not cut? That would at least narrow down for her what Daniel could not be, assuming she had impaled his hand fifteen years ago. If he could make himself look like an owl, then certainly he could make it look as though he had been cut when he in truth had not. She replaced the crystal sheath.

She thought about the clues she might have from her dream; the more she thought about her dream, the more real it became. Her security instincts told her that she ought to check to see if the ship’s sensors had recorded an intruder, but somehow she knew that just about everyone would laugh at the idea that their Security Chief had been spooked by a dream. Well, they might not laugh, but they would certainly bless her with strange looks. She decided she would go borrow Data’s desk. It had better access to all the scanners then the run of the mill desktop terminal, and Data wouldn’t laugh at her.

She walked over to her closet and pulled out a long, ankle-length robe. She thought the more common Starfleet just-long-enough-to-cover-your-backside style robe was a waste of material. Why have a robe at all if it is barely adequate for the job? She pulled the robe on and tied the cord around her waist. She placed the little dagger in her pocket and started for the door. When she reached her door, she felt with even more assurance that her dream had not been of the ordinary sort. She remembered coming to her door earlier that night, just as surely as she remembered retrieving her dagger from the statue. She paused for a moment at the door, somewhat nervous, as if she expected ghosts to be on the other side of it. She felt her own foreboding begin to dredge up memories of other times she felt a similar foreboding. She purposefully strode through her door, hoping to force her memories back where they wouldn’t bother her.

Outside her door was the same empty hall, thankfully without ghosts. Still, being in the hall made her dream that much more real. She started going over her dream in her mind, committing to memory as much as possible as she walked down the hall to the turbolift. Most prominent in her mind was Daniel asking her about Data. Would in some hypothetical situation she let him know about things she didn’t even want to remember? How could she tell someone else something she couldn’t even tell herself? And what in the galaxy did Data have to do with those strange things she couldn’t quite remember when she woke up?

She reached the turbolift and waited for the doors to open. When they did, she walked into the car and turned to face the doors. "Deck Two," she announced. A young-looking ensign who shared the lift looked sideways at Tasha and then carefully slid as far away as she could without looking extremely obvious. Tasha glanced in the ensign’s direction, wondering why she would move away.

"You looked as though you needed some space," the ensign offered in a thick French accent.

Tasha huffed. "I’m fine, I’m just tired."

The ensign nodded. They finished the trip in silence.

When the turbolift arrived at Deck Two, both passengers disembarked. The young ensign turned left and walked down that hall, while Tasha turned right.

Tasha walked the rest of the way down the short hall to Data’s quarters. As she walked, she idly wondered why his quarters were in among the ones assigned to junior officers when he was third down on the chain of command of this ship. Maybe he traded a larger living space for his desk. She arrived at his door and pressed the chime.

She heard a muffled, "Come in." She wrinkled her nose at how thin the walls on the Enterprise were, then walked into Data’s quarters.

She found Data sitting on his couch, reading some book that Captain Picard had given him. Probably Shakespeare, knowing the captain. Data looked up and said, "Should you not be asleep?"

Tasha walked over and sat down next to him, saying, "Yes, I should be, but I’m not." She peered over Data’s shoulder at the book he was reading. "I knew it was Shakespeare," she commented.

Data placed his fingers on the purple bookmark and turned the pages until he reached the marked page. He began reading what was on the marked page in his even, calm tone:

"When in disgrace with Fortune and men’s eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
And trouble deaf heaven with my bootless cries,
And look upon my self and curse my fate,
Wishing me like to one more rich in hope,
Featured like him, like him with friends possessed,
Desiring this man’s art, and that man’s scope,
With what I most enjoy contented least,
Yet in these thoughts my self almost despising,
Haply I think on thee, and then my state,
Like to the lark at break of day arising,
From sullen earth sings hymns at heaven’s gate,
For thy sweet love remembered such wealth brings,
That then I scorn to change my state with kings."

He closed the book and set it aside on a small shelf.

Tasha smiled. She sat for a moment in silence, then said, "I love you, too."

Data looked back at her in that way that said he was thinking several things at once, but at least one of them concerned her addition of ‘too’ to an otherwise perfectly acceptable sentence. He chose not to follow that avenue of thought and instead he set his hand on hers and asked, "Why are you here so late?"

From time to time, Data’s talent for thinking several thoughts at once became a bit vexing. In a way, it was almost schizoid. Tasha knew that Data’s hand was acting on a separate thought than his voice (though not in the same way human hands were often guilty), but she had a little trouble separating the expressions.

She would just act on one thought at a time, so she turned her hand over and intertwined her fingers with his. It amazed her all over again how Data’s fingers would look and feel as though they were more human-like than they were. A human wouldn’t have to take any action to let someone move their fingers; relaxed, a human could be moved around like a big rag doll without trouble. If Data were to take no action to help her move his fingers so she could hold his hand, it would be as though she were trying to move the hand of Michaelangelo’s David. What amazed her was Data’s ability to act as if she could move his fingers freely when in fact he had anticipated her and moved accordingly. It took an extreme subtlety of action and a great deal of control to achieve the effect of no active movement at all.

She took a moment to breathe, then answered Data’s question. "I wonder if you’d do me a favor. I had a dream just now and I don’t think it was all a dream, but I didn’t want to yell fire before I checked out the smoke." She paused, noticing Data’s ‘that-was-slang-and-you-know-I-do-not-understand-slang’ expression. She added, "It just means I don’t want to concern anyone with something I’m not sure about."

Data nodded understanding. "What do you want me to do?" he asked.

"First, I wanted to ask if you knew any humanoid species that would not be easily injured with this," she said as she pulled the small dagger out of her pocket. She handed it to Data who took it.

He examined the sheathed dagger, turning it over in his hand. He reclaimed his other hand and removed the crystal sheath. He set his finger against the broadside of the black blade, then against the faceted hilt. He asked, "Are you asking if this blade would inflict a serious injury or merely a flesh wound?"

"I guess it would be a flesh wound. I impaled someone’s hand with it, and I wanted to see if I could narrow down his species by ruling out any humanoids who couldn’t be impaled with that dagger."

Data thought for a moment, then drew the point of the blade across one of his fingertips. The black edge effortlessly slit his skin. He looked at the tiny cut for a moment, then answered, "I cannot help you. This dagger has a dinitrogen crystal blade. This blade could injure me in that fashion quite easily; to my knowledge, my exoskeleton is far harder to damage than any humanoid’s flesh. I would not doubt that in the hands of someone with sufficient strength, this dagger could sever my limbs." He carefully replaced the sheath and handed the dagger back to Tasha.

She looked at the dagger with a new respect. This was in all likelihood one of the sharpest and strongest daggers in the galaxy. If this thing could cut Data’s duranium bones, what couldn’t it cut? She took the dagger and put it back in her pocket. "I knew it was sharp, but I didn’t know it was that sharp."

"Dinitrogen crystal is ideal for surgical tools in situations where laser scalpels cannot be used. Dinitrogen is related to dilithium; they are equally difficult to break, but dinitrogen crystal holds an edge better," Data commented while he sealed the thin cut on his finger with a small laser tool he kept hidden under a fingernail.

"And how often does it happen that a total stranger gives a kid a dagger made of dinitrogen?" Tasha asked, without intending for her question to be answered.

Data looked up from his finger. "I do not know. I suspect it would not happen often; your dagger is very dangerous and also rare. I do not think I would trust a child with it."

"Huh," Tasha commented, "someone gave it to me when I was young. In fact, it was the same guy whose hand I impaled."

"Perhaps if I had the chance, I would have given you that dagger. You would have had more need of it than I."

"Yeah, I guess," Tasha said quietly. She had put that little dagger to those tasks which it was made to do best: to spill blood and take life. The dagger had protected her more often than it had failed her, but even its protection did her harm. No one can escape whole from a place where violence is the air and the only decision is who is going to be violated this time. She had committed her own share of violence; that little black dagger simply meant she did not commit so much. A few people on Turkana IV had enough brain in their heads to steer clear of the little girl with the wicked knife.

Tasha again reached into her pocket and retrieved the dagger. She looked at it for a moment, then handed it back to Data. "You keep it," she said, "I don’t need it anymore." She sounded subdued.

Data took the dagger, unsure what to say. It was not that Tasha did not need the dagger; she apparently no longer wanted it. He wondered why that would be, but he did not ask. He set the crystal dagger on his volume of Shakespeare.

Tasha sat for a moment in silence, then said in a more normal tone, "You know that dream I mentioned? The person who gave me that dagger was in it. He said he used manipulated subspace fields to force light away from him so he was completely black. I wondered if maybe the ship’s scanners had picked up an unusual subspace field around the time I was dreaming. The dream was a little too real for me to just let it go, but then again, it might be my overactive imagination."

Data stood up and walked over to his desk. Tasha noted to her amusement that Data was so graceful he fairly floated over to his desk, but in any given moment when someone else was around, he looked as if he might trip over his own feet because his gait was so awkward. At least relatively so. She figured he was just trying as hard as he could not to impress anyone. Tasha got up and followed him to his desk.

Data sat down and accessed the ship’s scanner records. He looked up and asked, "When did you have your dream?"

"I woke up at 2:33 this morning, and I think I woke up right after my dream."

Data tapped a few buttons, then scanned the records for the space between 0100 hours and 0233 hours. The records flickered by with blinding speed. In a few moments, Data had read every bit of information the ship had recorded in that time frame. He reported, "A ship-wide, low level subspace field was present between oh one hundred twenty one hours and oh two hundred thirty hours. The field behaved in a way to suggest the Enterprise had passed through it. The field strength was so low and uniformly irregular that it suggests a natural phenomenon. The field posed no danger to the ship and did not affect any systems." Data looked up at Tasha and added in a more personable tone, "It is not uncommon for ships to pass through such fields, but it is somewhat unusual for this area of space."

Tasha drummed her fingers on her crossed arm. "That doesn’t help me either way. I guess it’s nothing big enough to wake the captain over. Let me think." She chewed her lower lip, pondered for a few moments on the events of her dream. Then she asked, "Are there any humanoid races that have exceptionally low body temperatures? I mean a whole lot colder than you."

"The Ohn-Wahl maintain a body temperature of ten degrees centigrade, which is noticeably lower than my normal temperature of seventeen degrees centigrade. The Ohn-Wahl are only considered humanoid because they have a body plan that is in general similar to a human’s. Specifically, however, they have tails, very large bat-like ears, horns, and they walk on the points of their exceptionally long, bony toenails. They would be difficult to mistake for the more common humanoid races."

"I guess Daniel isn’t an Ohn-Wahl," Tasha commented.

Data asked, "Daniel is the person whom gave you the dagger?"

Tasha nodded. "Maybe I ought to tell you more about him before I ask anything else. In my dream he was at least a head taller than I was, he had short hair and a smooth, human-like face. When I met him on Turkana IV, he had a bird-like voice, very cold skin, I think he had four fingers and a thumb on his hand, he was very quick and strong, and he had an exceptional sense of smell. He sniffed Spot and told me that she was going to be a he and soon enough, she became a he."

"Spot?" Data asked, puzzled.

"Oh, she, um he, was my cat. When she was a she, she had a big white spot on her stomach. I guess Turkanan cats change sexes every so often. Daniel had a way with cats, too. Turkanan cats are usually very protective, but Spot loved Daniel." Tasha paused, remembering her cat. Spot was one of those good memories that seemed to have been lost among the bad. "I wish I still had Spot. I miss her."

Data looked away for a moment with a distinctly mischievous look on his face. He said slowly, "A friend of mine, Captain Yitshak Silverman, is a ‘cat-fancier’ and he has been known to occasionally...acquire cats from non-Federation planets. If I asked, I think he could find a Turkanan cat for you, on the condition you did not mention how you came by the cat."

Tasha laughed out-loud. Data knew a cat-smuggling captain! And he was prepared to utilize his friend’s shady services just so she could have a Turkanan cat! This proved it; Data was perfectly capable of being sneaky. She said with glee, "I’ll think about it." She snickered again.

"What is so amusing?" Data asked, perplexed.

"Oh, it’s just that I never expected you to be the type to smuggle kitty cats around the cosmos."

"I do not smuggle cats. Yitshak smuggles cats. If one were to tour the Trieste on any given day, one would find at least seven cats roaming the halls. They would most likely be Yitshak’s." Data paused for a moment, then added, "If I am not promoted to captain in seven and a half years, he promised he would send a plague of locusts on Starfleet Headquarters. I imagine he would need to smuggle the locusts as well. Do not tell anyone; it would ‘spoil the fun’ if Starfleet were to know."

Tasha covered her mouth in an attempt to stifle another giggle. After she got it under control, she said, "I’m going to have to meet this captain friend of yours. He sounds like quite a character."

Data cocked his head, saying, "He is interesting."

"OK, you can get me a cat, but only if you promise I get to meet Captain Cat-Smuggler," Tasha said.

"I will try to arrange a meeting. Yitshak is always interested in meeting fellow ‘cat-fanciers’."

Tasha yawned suddenly. "Maybe we should finish figuring out if my dream was real or not. I won’t be able to sleep until then."

"I have been thinking about it, and I do not know any species that fits your description. However, that does not mean that Daniel did not exist. He may be using technology to augment his senses and alter his color and temperature. It is possible that the Federation has not encountered his race. It is also possible that Daniel is of a race we know little about," Data commented.

Tasha frowned. "If my dream was real, Daniel would have to be a telepath, wouldn’t he?"

Data nodded, adding, "He would not need to be a true telepath. Vulcans can achieve a similar result with their relatively limited touch telepathy."

"There was something else. Daniel told me some things that I don’t quite remember. He said they were an answer to why I needed to trust you."

Data looked at her as if to ask her to continue.

"It was really confusing. He told me something about a big, slimy thing, and gold crab-like beings. There was something about a great silver sea and tiny flying spots, zooming around and hitting the crabs. There was also an unpleasant black thing, which seemed to cause someone a great deal of pain. I don’t remember much else, except that something clear and something dark seemed important." She shrugged, her expression almost apologetic for how confused her story was.

"I do not see a connection," Data commented in his matter-of-fact tone.

"Just about everything Daniel said was confusing. I--" a mighty yawn interrupted her. "--Don’t see a connection either," she continued.

"You should sleep," Data told her.

"I know," Tasha answered, "but I don’t think I can. I promised myself I would get mad in my dream if it turned out real, but now I’m just spooked." She stood still for a moment, obviously anxious about the prospect of sleeping now that she knew she could no longer avoid it. She raked a hand through her short hair. She continued in a worried tone, "It brought back too many memories, and I’m afraid of having nightmares."

Data almost looked sad. "I wish I could help you," he said quietly.

"Maybe it’ll help if you let me borrow your couch. I think ghosts are scared of you," she said, referring in a round about way to Data’s unusual talent for making her feel secure. She did trust him; perhaps not as profoundly as Daniel had suggested, but she knew Data would never hurt her the way others had. He bore only a surficial resemblance to those cruel men on Turkana IV, but in every other way he was nothing like them. If Data had been human, very likely she would have never given herself a chance to know him well at all. She would have never truly known there were thoroughly kind people in existence, people who were incapable of the wickedness she had seen.

"You are welcome to sleep on my couch," Data said. He looked hurt, in a way. He added, "Ghosts do not fear me."

Tasha was unsure whether Data was speaking about real spirits or metaphorical ones. It had never really occurred to her that Data might be haunted by his own memories. Maybe she was reading more into Data’s statement than he intended. "What ghosts?" she asked, to clarify.

"Do not worry about my ghosts. Ask later and I will tell you about them. Right now, you need to sleep." Data stood up and walked over to his replicator to get a blanket.

Tasha yawned again, deciding Data was right; she really couldn’t postpone sleep for much longer. She sighed and trudged over to Data’s couch. She sat down, hoping she would sleep peacefully for the rest of the short night. Data handed her the new blanket, which she unfolded and arranged. She pulled it up and snuggled in, getting comfortable. Data sat on the floor next to her and asked the computer to shut off the lights. "Goodnight," he said.

"Goodnight," Tasha yawned. She added, "I count it as more precious what you can do than what you can’t."

"Love you," Data said, to be sure he understood.

"Yeah," Tasha said softly.

Data moved closer to his couch and kissed Tasha’s cheek. He then set his head next to hers, with his mouth to her ear. He sang to her, those songs which rivers and trees sang, and all that the rain said to the air. It was very restful and somewhat hypnotic. She fell asleep almost immediately.

Tasha slept undisturbed except for one sentence she half heard sometime in the night. It almost sounded as if Data had said it, but he would never say such a thing: "When you understand my words, then will you know me."

Tasha died three weeks later.

* * *

The ship was moving again. Captain Picard watched as the nothing before him resolved to the shape of his captor, but without the sense of malice that Picard felt before. "I am nearly finished. We are now traveling to Keleia Sigma B, called Yoilu by those who live there. I will return you to the Enterprise shortly," Data said calmly.

Picard frowned, "Why are you doing this?"

"I need to, that is why."

Picard rolled his head in frustration. He knew Data could be aggravatingly literal when answering questions. He would just have to ask more pointedly. "Why do you need to?"

Data walked to the invisible wall and set his hand on it. An expanse filled with stars appeared where before there was nothing. A planet hung like a jewel in space, a striking silver and green. No clouds clung to the curve of the planet; the emerald continents glowed through the atmosphere without blemish. The silver oceans reflected the starlight as a mirror. "Below the surface there is a danger that must be undone."

Picard stood up and walked to the starry wall, almost awed by the beauty of the cloudless planet. "You are here to undo it," Picard stated.

Data turned to look at the captain. "No," he said simply.

"Then what are you doing?" Picard asked angrily.

"Watching. Setting you on your way. When the time comes, do as you must, but do not stop me," Data said forcefully.

Captain Picard felt the ship turn into orbit around the great planet. He watched as the silver surface of the planet turned below. A great black shape slowly came into view. The black shape was enormous; it moved over the sea like several serpents, waving about like Medusa’s hair. And it was growing. It was growing fast enough to be visible in space. Picard had no doubt that this was the danger Data spoke about. He saw the very surface of the planet swallowed up in a black cloud behind the snaking shape.

"What is that?" Picard asked in horror.

Data looked at him, then back at the surface of the planet. "That," he said, "will destroy the universe."

"And you are here to watch," Picard ground out.

"Yes," Data answered simply.

Picard glared at the gold-skinned being next to him. Data felt the stare and looked up, almost smiling. His expression was pleased. "You do not know what it is I will watch. Let time take its course. I do not change the past; what will be will be." He looked back at the planet, watching as the dark blotch on the silver surface moved below.

Captain Picard had no idea what to make of that. He could not believe the real Data would sit by and watch as a great blackness destroyed the universe. How did he even know if he was telling the truth? He felt like hitting his captor. How could he be so happy about watching a black worm-thing destroy a planet? It was very much something Q would do, to make him sit and watch helplessly as destruction rained down upon the planet below. If this was Q beside him, then he might repair the damage, but then he might not. In any event, Picard had nothing to do but wait.

Commander Riker looked up at the viewscreen. His breath caught. This was the most exquisite planet he had ever seen. Keleia Sigma B outclassed the beautiful Vs; Vs bore the loveliest shades of blue and green, but Keleia Sigma B was silver. The ocean sparkled like diamonds, unobstructed by clouds, while the green of the continents appeared as jewels in a setting. For a moment, he was lost in the colors of the planet.

Ensign Sier reported from Tactical, "The planet’s oceans are almost entirely composed of mercury, Commander."

Snapping out of his reverie, Riker looked back at Nazzi ad Sier. "So you’re saying the oceans are pretty to look at but you wouldn’t swim in them."

Sier hissed a snicker. "There are life forms in the ocean. They don’t seem to mind."

Data looked up at the viewscreen, transfixed by what he saw there. "Silver sea...and a black thing that caused pain...how could she know? How could she know?" His voice was almost inaudible.

Riker glanced at Data, who still lay on the floor. "Who knew what?" he asked, concerned that this might be something important, but unsure if it was just more insanity.

Data smiled wickedly. "It is easier than I thought. I wonder what else I could do...?" Data slumped back to the carpet, his eye closed and his expression aggrieved.

Nazzi looked back at Tactical, her slit pupils narrowing. "We have a distress call from the surface," she said in a clipped tone.

Riker wiped his beard and muttered quietly, "Of course we do." He slapped his hand to his side and said, "Open a channel."

They received no visual, just an audio message. The voice was insectoid. "Star farers, please, we need your help."

Riker figured he could hazard a guess as to the problem, but he felt it best to let them explain. "This is Commander Riker of the starship Enterprise. What seems to be the problem?"

"Please come down, it would be easier to explain the exact trouble," the voice said over the comm channel. "Planetwide distress...Qctvtjstryu has finally loosed itself on our world."

Data leapt back like he’d been struck by molten metal. He staggered to his feet, using the Conn as a handhold...crushing the armrest in his hands. "QCT! Qct, qct, qct....!" Riker looked at him in shock, while on the comm line the voice asked, "Is there problems there too?"

The Android ripped the hanging bit of thin outer skin off his exoskeleton so hard it took part of his uniform with it. He flung the damp pseudo-flesh in Riker’s face and demanded in a voice several levels too high in volume, "TAKE ME DOWN THERE NOW!!"

Riker gasped and shoved the dripping Android gore off his face. "Sier! Get him off the bridge!"

At the order, Sier jumped over the horseshoe and aimed her phaser at Data, intending to threaten him. In a flash the Deitang ducked back, almost falling over, as four razor sharp gold blades snapped out over her head. Riker’s eyes widened; those blades were actually formed of Data’s exoskeleton!

"TAKE ME DOWN TO YOILU NOW!"

He slapped his communicator and shouted, "Transporter! Transport Data site-to-site to the brig!"

Before Data could react, the blue annular confinement grabbed him and beamed him off the bridge. Riker exhaled loudly, while Sier stood up and growled.

"Commander Riker...how...did you know the name of our world?"

Habitually turning back to the viewscreen, Riker wiped some of the viscous organic fluid that passed as Data’s blood out of his beard. "I’m sorry...you needed someone to come down there? I’ll be down shortly."

"Thank you," the voice said, and then the line closed after some coordinates were sent.

Riker sat back heavily in the Captain’s chair for a moment, gathering his thoughts. Then he said, "Deanna, Sier, come on, we have another problem to attend to." He got up, and the two followed him to the Turbolift. He tapped his comm badge, "Geordi, meet us in the Transporter room."

"Yes sir," the engineer replied.

To himself, Riker wondered, "What’s next?"

* * *

Lonely on a planet sat the abandoned one. The cast off, unwanted, rejected, undesired pool of trash...

And that self-righteous bastard Picard...it knew he had made it so no one would ever come here again. It knew that...that no one would ever come here again, and that it would remain in its solitude, screaming in its head out of boredom and hatred of anything and everything. There were not enough rocks to throw, boulders to crush, plants to kill, nothing left to torture to death...

The shuttle craft remained, derelict, useless, hopeless to repair...it knew a lot, massive amounts...it could repair the craft if there had been any raw materials left on this dead hulk of a world, this prison. But they had been sure there wouldn’t be, they stripped everything useful off their homeworld just so it would never escape.

They could cast it off, but not destroy it. Maybe they were too good for that now; maybe they thought it was the nice thing to do, leave it here to rot. It hissed, the only thought to content itself with was the one that they were wrong and had committed SIN after they cast it off. They hadn’t gotten rid of it...it was still there infecting their fine kind little black stained hearts.

But thoughts wouldn’t get it off this planet.

Just as it was winding up for another long hopelessly useless pounding on that shuttle to vent frustrations, something stood on the planet. It whipped around, rising up in a humanesque shape to confront the intruder. "Who are you," Armus hissed.

"A visitor." The other was as black as Armus, but it knew that was not its natural color. It could feel subspace warped around it.

Armus tugged at the subspace, making the shadow cover drift a little like smoke, but it couldn’t pull the creature’s disguise away. "Show me yourself!"

The shadow creature merely stepped closer. "I have a proposition to make." The other, more humanoid shaped than Armus could be, had a voice like birds...a sound Armus hadn’t heard in centuries, not since he had ripped the feathers off the last bird to live on this planet. Its bird-voice was fierce, clipped...as if it spat the words out of its mouth because they were so vile.

Armus laughed. "Entertain me, then we’ll talk."

It could feel the shadow creature tense, but it...his...voice was calm. "I have something better in mind. How would you like to leave this dead planet, this prison?"

It was Armus’ turn to tense. It remembered Picard again... "You plan on tricking me? What possible reason could you have to take me from here? What do you want?"

The shadow paced, kicking at the dirt around Armus, then with a wide, powerful move, he kicked sand in Armus’ face. The dirt and pebbles adhered to its oily form, and Armus screamed, lashing out with power at the shadow.

But his power bounced off the creature, with no effect. Armus screamed again, casting out more power, trying to rip the creature’s arms off, but again, nothing. The creature was not unfazed, however; he had to stand and hold his arms up, as if he were creating a forcefield.

Armus noted this and calmed somewhat, smiling inwardly, confident he could break this creature eventually. "So...why do you want to take me from this planet?"

The other stood stock still, and Armus felt him gathering a huge resistance in himself. He wanted to do something violent, it could feel the desire...then it sensed something else unfamiliar, a power rising in him. But Armus felt no threat.

"I have...something for you. You should be rewarded, and I have a fitting reward for you. Come with me, let me show you." His voice was still strained.

It flicked a rock away idly. "I don’t see why." It was obvious to Armus that this creature wanted it to come with him...badly enough to visit, badly enough to fight himself over it, so it decided to play a little, certain that it would still get off the planet, after having some fun.

The shadow man lowered himself before Armus, kneeling so that his head was lower than its. Armus laughed heartily. "Are you placing yourself at my mercy?"

A faint smile sensed behind darkness. "Yes. You will have all the time history has left to torment me."

Armus scrutinized this shadow shape. It sensed there was more, something else he was about to say but didn’t. "What else?"

"A chance at...revenge."

"Revenge...?" Now its curiosity was definitely piqued.

"Indeed...against a man, a human you might remember..." The dark one drew his long fingers along the ground in lazy circles.

Armus hissed slightly. The balance of power had shifted...now the shadow was playing with it. But it couldn’t resist the bait. "Who? Who is this human and how do you know him?"

The shadow man extended his black fingers almost to touch Armus’ humanoid form. "Jean-Luc Picard."

Armus growled, and it felt power going out of him just in fury over that name. "Revenge! On that monster in human clothing!"

"Yes," the other whispered, "a chance to harm him, to frustrate him, to twist a knife in his gut...so to speak." Fingers touched black. "He will be helpless before you."

It flinched away from the touch, sensing a force more powerful than its own, but it was intrigued at the same time. The chance to exact revenge on Picard...and the chance to leave this planet...with the promise that this man in black would allow it to torment him forever...

Armus considered the man darkly. "That sounds too good to be true."

"Perhaps. But I do not lie." The shadow plunged his fist in Armus’ viscous form.

Armus growled, angry at the shadow’s boldness, but in a flicker the shadows fell away and for an instant he saw the stranger. "You! The machine!"

Darkness shrouded him again. "That is how I know. I always keep my word." Before Armus could answer, it felt itself drawn up and into the false man’s fist, into his arm, into the power field Armus had thought was no threat. It was...it was a prison, just smaller, and Armus was just as helpless to escape it as it had been the planet.

Inside the tiny field, Armus howled. "You lied! You lied!"

"No, I have not lied. You must learn...delayed gratification."

An instant later there was nothing left on Vagra II but a beaten shuttle craft, footprints, and a few circles in the dirt.

* * *

Picard stood fuming at the viewscreen, angry and helpless as he watched a world torn apart at the seams. He glared at the side of his companion’s face. "How can you stand to watch this?!" he demanded.

The being who claimed to be Data looked back at Picard dispassionately. "It is not easy. This is very difficult for me."

Picard had a hard time believing that. "If it’s so difficult, why are you just sitting here watching?"

Data looked back out at the planet. "I am not just watching. Right now I am raving like a madman. It occurred to me far more than once to wonder how you and your crew could trust me...I have been always half insane, as you might say, and far more dangerous than you ever seemed to realize." He turned his eyes to look at Picard sidelong. "But you knew that, did you not?"

Picard crossed his arms. "Yes, I knew. Sometimes it surprised me that Starfleet never decommissioned you and locked you away...not often however. You were as much an asset as a danger, and we trusted you. No, we trusted Data, you do not inspire any trust the way he does."

"You trust me, because I am Data."

"I don’t believe it. Data can’t do what you do, and he would never dare."

Data turned and walked a little way from the viewscreen, then faced Picard. "Do you know how old I am? The time counted in Terran years would be meaningless to you they are so vast. Do you not think in that time I could have learned of things that would cause me to commit to this course you find incomprehensible? That I would know I had to do this for hundreds of thousands of trillions of centuries, and that I would learn how to do it and modify myself to do it? At this instant, in the Enterprise, I am capable of traveling through time at a whim, but I have not realized it yet. I have done it before. I will do it again."

Picard dropped his arms to his side and looked back at Data, considering him thoughtfully. "So you mean to say that this is your past, and you know how it turns out?"

"This is my present...right now. But it did occur in my past as well."

"And you know how it turns out...but you won’t say, will you."

Data shook his head. "You know I cannot."

Picard narrowed his eyes. "Why the games? I feel as though you were manipulating us all."

"I am."

Such a simple statement. The Captain barely restrained himself from decking his captor. Data saw the tensed muscles but didn’t flinch. "I did not say I was enjoying it. I am sorry to have had to resort to such tactics; it is not you I have manipulated so much as Commander Riker...and I have done such damage to myself I will never forget it nor be free of it, but it was worth it. It is not the first, but the best, and the worst, record of lives lived that I have kept...I am an eternity of other’s memories. Now, it is time for you to return, and for the hand to be played out."

Suddenly everything went dark, and the silver dappled Arabian that had brought him here kneeled before Picard.

Riker, Troi, La Forge, and Sier beamed down to the location the Yoilu had sent them. It was on the shore of a wide silver sea; beneath their feet crunched golden-red sand and lush green plants grew on the nearby bluffs.

It was a dry climate for being next to the ocean, but considering the ocean was made of mercury, that wasn’t surprising. It was a beautiful place, but the four didn’t get a chance to really appreciate it, for there was an uncanny stillness in the air and the ground trembled faintly but ominously.

Troi rubbed her head. "There’s a lot of intense emotion here...but I guess that should be expected, since they said they were in trouble."

"They mentioned that Cocutsomethingorother...the Vstrak, remember, that they said crash landed on this planet? And that they said they’d received a communications from here about it?"

"Oh, yes."

"...But did our scanners pick up anything?" Riker directed this question to Sier, wishing they had had a better chance to look in on the planet.

"No, unfortunately. We were a little preoccupied," she hissed in annoyance.

"Well," Riker sighed, "let’s go see what’s wrong then."

Yoiluran Geordi scanned the area with his tricorder and pointed them toward the bluffs. After a short walk they turned to the south and came to a small enclave of huts. Creatures peeked out of them that looked very much like golden hued crabs. They balanced themselves on their hind legs somewhat the way a grasshopper might, but they had wide flipper-like feet that came under their large, domed shells, so they were technically bipedal. They had tiny lobster tails and two rows of appendages, the first set ending in three muscular ‘fingers’ that had no exoskeleton. Their stalked eyes were emerald green.

The beings all seemed very fidgety, their antennae twitching nervously. The Away Team passed through the huts to what looked like a clay dais in the center. On it stood a Yoiluran with exceptionally striking markings on its shell. In one tentacled appendage it held a gemstone like a ruby, but it seemed to be on fire.

As the Away Team approached, the Yoiluran hopped off the dais and looked toward them imploringly, or as imploringly as a crab can.

"Are you Commander Riker?" the creature asked, and the Away Team could tell it took great care to pronounce his name correctly.

"Yes, I am." Then he introduced the other members of his Away Team. The Yoiluran carefully pronounced their names after he said them.

"It is good to meet you. I am Jhanai Dormung, the current king of Yoilu...." He said this with a sort of clicking sound, reminiscent of a sigh. "My kingship will not last long, I think. Qctvtjstryu has loosed itself at last."

Trying his best to sound calm, Riker asked, "What has Cocutvitjistryu done? We had heard from the Vstrak there were legends...."

Dormung clicked two small claws together. "Yes, yes...many ages ago, long after we sought out a new land, the Vstrak attempted space exploration. It failed; it is not generally known, but the Yoilu did not originate here...we are from Vs. Somehow the Yoilu can travel in space while the Vstrak cannot...but one ship long ago made landfall on Yoilu with a sole survivor...Qctvtjstryu. It attempted to eat us, but we sealed it away in the cavern its ship crashed in. For many years it was forgotten, but scientists realized that it was growing, and eating...somehow this mad Vstrak had begun to drain the energy of our world! It carved holes for itself, and there was a great deal of tectonic disturbance from it. But now...Commander Riker, you have come just in time. If it were possible, if your star faring ship is large enough, could you take some of us, some of the younger Yoilu, back to Vs? Qctvtjstryu has become too large, and we fear in a few days Yoilu will crack like the egg around a newborn just emerging."

Riker was dumbfounded for a moment. The thought of something eating away the inside of a planet...and growing so huge it was generating a gravitational field of its own apparently as strong as the planet’s...it was staggering. "Of course...yes, of course...with the permission of the Vstrak, would could probably transport about 3,000 of you at once, drop you off, and come back for more. I don’t know how many we could transport in the time you have left, but I would guess at least 30,000 if we used all our resources."

The Yoiluran king actually swayed and staggered, almost dropping the crystal he held. "You...you...your ship...it’s that big? You could do that for us?"

Riker nodded. "It seems like the only thing we can do. We can’t abandon an entire race to destruction!"

"Oh...oh, Commander, we would be in your debt...we are not a star faring race, but we have gifts we could give, there must be something we could do in return."

Riker smiled. It felt good to finally be doing something useful on this mission, something lifesaving. "We’ll start immediate beam ups, and in the mean time, contact Vs and see about going back. If they say no, we’ll try negotiations, do whatever it is we need to do to get as many Yoilu to safety as we can."

The Yoiluran bobbed in their equivalent of a bow, and he called for some of his attendants to give Riker the coordinates of all their settlements, starting with the closest to where Qctvtjstryu had already emerged.

Riker ordered a quick scan to confirm the disaster the Yoiluran king reported, and it was just as he had said; a picture was sent to Geordi’s tricorder and the Away Team looked, and could hardly believe their eyes. There was indeed an enormous black Vstrak-shaped creature cracking through the crust, emptying an ocean. Tiny black specks skittered about the clear blue sky, landing on anything and everything living, including Yoilu running from the scene. The black specks appeared to be very much like the star shaped mouths of the Vstrak. Riker had the Enterprise begin immediate beam outs of affected Yoilu, and soon Sickbay had its hands full.

Fortunately, when the affected Yoilurans were transported, the Vstrak mouths on them quickly dried up and died.

Within the hour, favorable arrangements had been made with Vs and The Enterprise began mass transport of Yoilurans, preparing to remove them from their fast dying world.

* * *

Tasha stumbled and blinked several times, completely shocked. She felt as though something had slapped her, and then she was...here?

One second she faced a monster of evil...and the next...this?

What was this? Silver and black and lightning in the distance and things moving at unimaginable speeds yet so slow...not Vagra II. What had happened?

She looked around, gaping. Human eyes were not meant to take in what ever this place was, she was sure of that. There was too much detail...she felt as though if she looked in one place long enough she would see into infinity. Far too much detail, dizzying amounts of information...she looked down at the ground...the sparks and silver and black extended to the floor...suddenly around her feet earth began to form, and she was aware of every single speck of dust and the contours of every pebble as they formed. It became almost...almost...a tiny bastion of normality in a sea of things inexplicable.

Still...knowing the exact count of the staggeringly large number of dust specks that now settled on her feet was just shy of mindblowing.

She shook her head and closed her eyes for a moment. She needed to get back to Vagra II, to rescue Deanna. So first things first: she needed to know how she’d arrived in the first place. She thought back to the instant she’d stumbled here...and recalled the split second with startling clarity, like a photograph of immense detail. Something struck her face...a flash of light she saw in the corner of her eye...

There was a splotch of brown, strangely shaped...it was not an organic form nor a mechanical...as though Armus drew it on her face...

Tasha blinked again. Foreign memories? But like her own...she saw that point in time through other eyes, but it was through her own as well. Very strange. But she couldn’t follow the thought forward to see if this other point of view had seen her disappear from Vagra II. She tried to return to her own point of view, and found it somewhat difficult. Nevertheless, she wrenched her thoughts free of the other sight and thought again about how she got here.

It was an instant, a distance of time so short it was certainly no longer than a picosecond.

"Wait...," she said to herself, her voice echoing softly, "since when could I tell time in picoseconds?" The question hung in the air like a visible thing, and it was snatched by one of those incredibly fast objects that she could follow with her eye as if they moved at a snail’s pace. She grunted in surprise, then a moment later an answer came to her in her mind... Since I was created.

She narrowed her eyes in confusion. As an experiment, she said to the air, "I’ve never been able to count in picoseconds."

Always.

"No, never."

Always.

"What the hell!" she shouted at the air, but nothing came to grab that statement and deal with it. Then she began to chase down one of the speeding objects, and she caught the glistening thing in her hands easily. It twisted and writhed like a living thing. She held it up to her face and stared at it intensely.

Maybe that was a mistake. In looking so intently and with such heat she felt her mind fall into the thing, filled up with gazing into what seemed like infinity. She shoved it out of her hands as if it had bit her and fell back on the ground, in a daze. Too much!

As she sat on the little patch of dirt trying desperately to still her reeling mind, she felt the presence of another person suddenly snap into existence.

With a yelp of dismay, Commander Riker appeared next to Yar, on his stomach, clutching and clawing at the ground as if his life depended on it. He grunted and looked up, seeming to no longer feel the need to pull himself free of whatever was dragging him in the first place. Shock registered on his face; Tasha could see him trying to take in the environment the way she had only a little while before.

"Don’t bother, Commander. Where ever we are really messes with your head."

His head snapped in her direction so quickly that he had to rub his neck. Gaping at the incomprehensible space was swiftly replaced by gaping at her. "Tasha! You’re alive?!"

Yar looked at Riker askance. "Yeah."

Swift moving objects snapped up her words and carried them off far away...and the sky changed. Now it was staring at her. The entire of existence was watching her...wary, confused...paranoid? The distant lightning approached swiftly, but there was near infinity between it and they.

Riker looked up. "What the hell is going on?"

"I don’t know, sir."

Words were again taken from the air and carried off, and an answer returned, one Yar knew they both could hear. I do not know.

The commander sat up and shot Tasha a glance. "The universe answers questions now?"

No.

"Uh...right..."

Tasha scratched her hair. "Maybe we should ask how we got here."

"Yeah...this sure as hell doesn’t look like what I’d expect the inside of an oil slick would." Riker gazed up at the approaching storm, and Tasha felt him lose himself in the details for a second.

Wait...felt? She looked at the ground, seeing it now extended around Riker as well, and the number of pebbles and bits of dust she somehow counted increased exponentially. A glance at Riker’s face revealed the number of hairs, pores, wrinkles...she pulled her mind away before she again got lost in the veritable Everest of information. After a long pause, she asked, "Have you noticed a...difference in thinking, Commander?"

Riker shook his head, and she felt him trying to pull his mind back from the brink of information overload. "Um...yeah, you could say that. Seems there’s exactly 124 quadrillion, 500 trillion, 937 billion, 635 million, 201 thousand, three hundred and twenty seven dust particles at my feet. Hell if I know why I know that though."

"So I’m not the only one that suddenly became a counting wizard."

Before they could say more, Captain Picard stood where once there was nothing. It was near instantaneous. Picard looked around in confusion just as Yar and Riker had before him. "Where am I?"

Words snapped up quickly, and an answer came in the form of the storm approaching even faster. Tasha noticed that from the opposite direction, something entirely malignant seemed to have grown into the silver and black sky, and it too approached them quickly.

I...am...I am...she I am, not...possible...I cannot be here!

Momentarily caught off guard, Picard shouted, "Well I certainly am, dammit! Now where is Troi!"

In the Observation Lounge, the last I saw.

"WHAT?! Armus, what kind of game are you playing now?!"

Tasha looked back at the malignancy, which suddenly pulsed at Picard’s words. "Captain, I don’t think Armus is responsible for this."

Picard stared down at her, with the same look of total shock Riker had. "Natasha!"

She smiled lopsidedly. "No, I’m not dead."

That is not true. She is............dead....

"What?" Tasha asked the sky, "How can I be dead if I’m sitting right here?"

Picard sighed sadly, but with a hint of anger. "We saw it. That...sadistic Armus killed you for no reason!" His hands clenched into fists at the memory...and suddenly the memory was hers as well.

What she’d seen with another’s view, the splotch of brown...now she saw it with not one point of view, but three. No, four? The first three views were clear, two tinged black with anger and sadness, one with some...sense...that she couldn’t decipher...and the fourth, a blurry fourth, with the twisted pleasure of a sadist. But that fourth thankfully was unclear, fluctuating, torn away and then returning, only to be torn away again.

Her body began to shake, just slightly. Overhead, the lightning storm clashed with the cancer...she looked up, and with the incredible clarity of vision this place, she saw the fractal lines and deep order that only appeared chaotic on the surface. But she wasn’t drawn into it as she had been drawn into the rest of this strange place. The storm looked back at her, the way the whole world looked at her, as if it were a living thing, and the universe filled with something she couldn’t describe, but she recognized it this time. But she never had been able to put into words what that very...‘other’ sort of irrationality was.

Glancing back at Picard and Riker, she saw their expressions had turned inward, and she felt them fighting to separate their thoughts. When the sensation of seeing through four views ceased, their expressions returned to normal. Riker remarked, "It’s kinda hard maintaining our individual identities here."

"It is," Picard agreed. "But these...," he pointed at one of the speeding objects, "seem to be able to answer our questions."

"True...so what do we ask, sir?" Riker responded.

"Well...the obvious, for one." The captain turned to look at one of the speeders. "How did we get here?" Several hundred of the flittering yellow speeders gathered around the question, and as Picard watched, it was as though they argued amongst themselves about what to do with it. They extended themselves like flexible rubber, stretching thinner and thinner and extending to eternity in every direction. Some connected to the storm above, some to the malignancy it warred with, some to the ground. Several began snaking toward Picard, and before he could react they pierced him, so thin he didn’t even feel it.

But he felt the argument. Riker and Yar also felt it, and they too soon were lanced through with a dozen golden spikes.

Now all three of them were hopeless to escape the pulling out of their minds, the melding of personality...Picard had asked a question that was no easy task for the world to answer, and it was drawing on all its faculties.

Including they themselves. All three of them, and the malignancy, and the storm, all of them...they suddenly realized where ever they were they were inextricably bound here, they couldn’t maintain individuality because they had become part of a much larger whole.

Tasha felt the dark cancerous thing yanking back, and with every pull she felt herself being jerked away from the speeders. The same was happening with Picard and Riker. Then, bolts of lightening rained down, full of half heard words and the consciousness of the world. Striking all around, but never once endangering the three below...and striking above, lancing brilliant blades at blackest darkness...

In an instant, the battle ended. Spindled around Commander Riker like spun gold was a web and he was absolutely still within it. Tasha felt him utterly separated. The speeders no longer extended to infinity, and she saw Picard, eyes narrowed, not utterly still the way Riker was, but in quiet contemplation. He also was separated, maintained in a delicate bowl of thinnest silver light. Tasha still sat on the ground, with dust on her boots. She was not separate, she knew; she could still count the dust and the pebbles and think in time so short that no human could comprehend.

And yet she did...

The malignancy beaten back for now, the thunder shying away from it...and suddenly she remembered something whispered by the air before she...died. She knew she had died, she couldn’t deny what she’d seen through the eyes of the captain and the commander, through the world and through the black. Whispered words returned...and she understood them. Song words, bird words, human words, machine words. Tehnehnehsehlehk, untranslatable into human words, but full of meaning...a term of...understanding.

She almost laughed. She knew what it meant; she knew what all of those bird-human words meant now. She would have laughed, but with understanding came the breaking of a seal, and suddenly she began to think and speak and seep knowledge into the ground of greatest import, and she knew why Daniel had said he was defending ‘now’.

Now it was her turn...to defend the present and the future...and be protected forever.

In the brig, Data suddenly stopped raging and tearing at the walls. No one saw it, but for the briefest instant he smiled, genuinely, something for him so rare that few living could claim to have seen it. Then he turned his attention to his torn arm and began making small, minute adjustments to his own electromagnetic field, according to the instructions that ‘Daniel’ had left him. Everything made sense now; and more than ever he needed to reach the planet below, but he trusted now a way would present itself.

Destiny...it was not exactly destiny, but rather the fulfillment of a present that had already been.

As he worked, Data considered the price he would pay for ‘Daniel’s’ information. It was high...very high, almost too costly, but...there were other factors. She was one, to live as long as he did in memory...as his daughter; Tasha would continue in a very real way, live again in him. So would Armus...his life ever with the memories of utter evil.

But he didn’t falter. The price for him was minuscule, really...compared to the price set on the universe....

* * *

"Commander Riker!" Ensign McKnight shouted through the comm channel.

Riker jabbed his communicator, turning from his overseeing the arrangement of Youilurans for mass transport. They had moved to an area closer to Qctvtjstryu’s destruction, and in the distance he could see its black specks flying about. "What is it, Ensign?"

"Sir, a Terran Arabian just breached the Enterprise hull. Scans confirm that Captain Picard is now on board!"

He blinked for a couple seconds. Just like that? Picard was returned to them just like that? "All right Ensign, we’ll be up in just a second." He tapped his badge off, and turned to the Away Team. "Well, you heard what she said, the Captain is apparently back."

Geordi tapped a foot. "That’s great news! But a little odd, don’t you think? Just snap him up and then drop him off without any contact with us at all?"

"I know. It’s damned peculiar. Just reinforces my belief we’ve been played with like toys."

Troi said, "Why don’t you go back up now, let us handle this?"

Riker held his chin. "Actually, I’m not sure we aren’t being tricked again. I’d like all of you to return; we can send down a rescue team to direct traffic just as well."

The three nodded, and Riker tapped his badge and requested beam out.

The horse disappeared almost the instant Captain Picard’s feet touched the carpeted deck of the Enterprise brig. When he was standing, he turned, expecting to see the horse, but it was gone with as much ceremony as it had appeared, which was none.

"Now why the brig of all places," Picard wondered to himself as he walked down the small line of cells. The answer, it seemed, presented itself rather quickly. Data was in one of the cells, currently standing with one of his hands half buried in the wall, apparently stuck, while he concentrated with a ferocious intensity on his other, fist clenching and unclenching. The walls of the brig looked as though some animal had been caged there; there were great gouges carved out of solid duranium, along the walls and the floor, while scattered chunks of metal lay everywhere.

It occurred to Picard not to distract Data in whatever it was he was doing, but it was too bizarre, and the Captain felt in strong need of some answers. "What are you doing?" he asked, calmly.

Data’s yellow eyes flicked up and registered a modicum of surprise. "It is good to see you have been returned, sir," he said, but Picard heard an unexpected strain in his voice.

Picard crossed his arms. "Well, yes, it’s good to be back, but I would still like to know what you are doing."

Data looked back at his left arm, which the Captain just now noticed was missing the pseudoflesh and a good bit of Data’s sleeve. "I am...taking a rather unorthodox chance, sir."

"Hrm. That doesn’t exactly answer my question, and I must admit I am grown rather annoyed with less than direct answers as of late."

"I apologize sir." Data paused, and for an instant his face contorted in fury and he yelled, "You lied to me! Let me go!" He pulled at his half-buried hand, but it stayed firmly planted in the wall.

Picard felt that same sense of darkness he had aboard the other ship. But it was frustrated now, and angry. "What is going on, Data!"

Data turned toward him and for a second it seemed he lost control of himself; "You!" he screamed, the unburied hand had somehow become clawed like a raptor’s, and the Android attempted to reach outside the confinement field. Picard stepped back instinctively; he knew there was no way for Data to escape, but the rage in his eyes and the present evil had startled him.

It seemed the shock of hitting the forcefield brought Data back to himself, and his hand returned to normal. There was frustration again, and Data returned his attention to his arm. "Sir, I am attempting to pull...Armus...out of the rest of my neural net and confine it in a specially made field in my arm."

"What?!" Picard demanded. "How in the hell did Armus get aboard my ship?!"

"My best guess, sir, given my current information, is that I brought it here."

Picard narrowed his eyes. "Can you explain to me why you think so?" he asked very calmly, keeping the sudden shock out of his voice.

Data nodded slightly. "A certain chain of events...contained...," he paused for a moment, as if searching for the proper words. "It appears that Armus unintentionally copies the neural patterns of all creatures it exercises any power over." He looked over at Picard. "This includes a perfect copy of Lieutenant Yar, Commander Riker, and yourself as you were on that day."

"My God," Picard breathed. "How can that be possible?"

"I do not know...but...it is...sir, I must apologize, before I realized this, I had accessed some of your memories...a question was asked...you asked...which could not be easily answered."

Picard’s expression paled slightly. "I...asked? These copies...are they that perfect?"

"Yes sir. They...you...did not know where you were, and asked ‘How did we get here?’...when I did find the answer, I sealed your copy and Commander Riker’s copy as best I could, so as not to intrude any more than I had."

"But...not Natasha’s."

Data looked away. "I cannot correctly label her patterns a ‘copy’ as the...original...no longer exists."

Captain Picard felt he could easily understand that. Data had a similar ‘copy’ of Lal...and Picard was one of the few that knew Tasha had meant a great deal to the Android.

Data continued. "That is how I came to the conclusion that it must have been myself that brought Armus here. She knew things she could not, of this specific situation, indeed of things I must assume I will see shortly for I have not yet viewed with my own eyes a Yoiluran, nor Qctvtjstryu, but I know what they look like. I have thus come to suspect that at some future date, I will be capable of traveling through time, to warp subspace and interphasic fields, to create holographic images, to somehow enjoy some manner or form of telepathy, and to...transport humans through space on Terran horses."

The Captain almost dropped his jaw, but managed to keep his composure. It became more and more clear that his captor had indeed been telling the truth the entire time, unless his captor had completely addled Data’s thinking. "What...is this ‘unorthodox chance’ you referred to?"

"I believe I can stop the creature tearing Yoilu apart." He glanced significantly at his arm. "I cannot say why." Data seemed to be finished with what he was doing; he easily loosed his hand from the wall, but Picard could not see anything that had bound it there in the first place.

"I think I can understand that," Picard answered.

"But...before I go...I must tell you: I cannot separate out your neural copy from Armus’. When I do what I believe I must, I will either keep it all...or lose everything." His voice was calm, but Picard knew him—there was a question unasked in his words.

It is not the first, but the best, and the worst, record of lives lived that I have kept...I am an eternity of other’s memories.

"Let me see your hair."

"Sir?"

Picard ordered the field lowered and stepped inside the Brig cell. "Forgive me the intrusion, Mr. Data," Picard said, somewhat reticent, and then reached up and searched for the telltale white streak his captor had said would be there. It took a few moments, but Picard managed to locate it. It wasn’t a proper streak, not as obvious...but there it was, just the beginnings of it. He didn’t know how long it would take Data to grow out his hair enough that the white would become visible, but just at the very base of his hair shafts, barely a millimeter or two long, there was white.

Picard stepped back and sighed. Then he smiled faintly. "Keep it, if you can. Just...try not to blackmail me with what you find."

Data blinked and stood straighter, and Picard fancied he looked a little offended. "Of course not, sir."

The instant the transporter field faded, Riker slapped his communicator. "Computer, locate Captain Picard!"

"Captain Picard is on Deck 10, en route to Transporter room 3."

Riker motioned to Troi, LaForge, and Sier. "Let’s go, it’s not that far." Then the Commander fairly broke out in a run, and the other three officers followed him.

As they neared the half-way point between Transporter rooms, four apparent apparitions blocked their path. Across the hallway stood a clean-shaven Riker, Yar, a somewhat younger looking Picard, and Data: the last in some rather gaudy costume made of greens and yellows. Sier flicked her tongue and lowered her crest.

"I’ve seen this one one too many times today," Sier hissed, pointing at the young Riker.

Deanna seemed on the edge of tears. "Who are you and why are you doing this?" She still sensed nothing behind the faces of these ghosts.

"I have answered that question," Data stated.

Geordi seemed to narrow his blind eyes. "No, actually, you haven’t." He held his hand to his VISOR then turned to Riker. "Who ever they are, they aren’t who they appear to be. They’re just like the phantoms we saw on the Bridge. Except for him," he pointed at Data, "he’s reading real enough, but not like Data."

"We don’t have a lot of time," Tasha said. "Not now at least."

"Not enough time to explain what I am doing, nor to satisfy the questions you must have," Data added.

"Story of my life!" Riker shouted. "Now if you...whatevers...don’t feel like explaining things, would you mind getting the HELL out of our way?"

The one who appeared to be Data looked at Troi. "Did you ask Riker about immortality?"

Troi nodded slightly. "I mentioned what Tasha said...."

The young Riker looked square in the face of the elder. "Well, you’re gonna get asked, and you’re lookin’ at it, in a way. You don’t have to say yes, but...you can see what’s right in front of your nose as well as anyone else can."

The elder Riker opened his mouth to say something, but suddenly the three phantom-officers vanished, leaving only the strangely dressed Data. "There is a great deal to lose, for all of you, if you do not accept the offer." Data looked at where the images had stood. "She...they are not puppets, Deanna. They have their own voices, and spoke their own words. But I cannot manifest them in a way in which you could sense them. Even were I capable, I would not." Then Data too vanished without a trace, except for the prints his weight had left in the carpet.

Riker wiped his beard and stared at the ceiling for a moment. "When is this madness going to end?" he asked of no one in particular.

"At least that pervasive evil is out of the walls," Sier commented. "It’s still here, concentrated...ahead of us. If our extraordinary luck holds, it will be in the Transporter room with Captain Picard."

"No kidding," Riker snorted. "Come on." Then he returned to his running toward the Transporter room.

It didn’t take them long; there were no more unexpected interruptions. Sier hissed loudly as soon as the entered Transporter room 3; apparently luck had held and the evil was just where she expected it to be.

What Riker didn’t expect was to see Picard, his back turned, facing a seemingly sane Data on a transporter pad. "Sir!" he cried out, skidding to a halt.

Picard turned to face him. "An interesting experience this has been," he said somewhat nonchalantly.

"You could say that sir," Riker returned, slowly. "Sir, I’ll be glad to say ‘welcome back’ and all that fun stuff in a second, but...," and he pointed up at Data, "last time I saw him, he was stark raving mad."

Picard replied, "Yes, well, it seems that was...a temporary but necessary side-effect. We’ve been had, Will, by what I must account one of the most devious minds I have ever met."

"HAD?!" Riker was a little upset. "I know we’ve been played like we’ve never been played before...and for what? This has been some goose chase we’ve been on. At least we got to save the Yoilurans."

Picard nodded. "That was part of it I believe."

While the two senior officers spoke, Geordi and Sier went up to the transporter pad. "You OK Data?"

"I am fine, Geordi," he answered calmly.

Sier flicked her tongue rapidly, sniffing at Data. "It’s you! You have it!" She clenched her mouth closed so no more of the disgustingly evil scent could get on her tongue, and then she clamped her clawed hands over her mouth. She muttered something incomprehensible.

Data looked at Sier then at LaForge. "What is it she means?" He would have asked her, but it was painfully obvious she didn’t want to open her mouth.

"She smelled something evil, before...it was in the walls, all over...but now I’m guessing she smells it on you," Geordi answered.

"Ah. That is understandable." Then with all the solemnity of declaring how nice the weather was, Data said, "I have infected myself with Armus."

Geordi gaped. "You...what...Armus?" This was not making sense.

"Yes," Data said, infuriatingly precise.

"But HOW?!"

Troi walked up, having overheard the conversation. "That is what I’ve been sensing, at least one of the familiar presences."

"I would guess I was the other one," Data added helpfully.

She shook her head. "No...I don’t know. There was more than one, before I sensed Armus."

Data had nothing to say to that, so he stayed silent.

Geordi demanded, "HOW, Data? How could you have done this?"

"I am sorry, I do not have time to explain, and it might endanger what I am attempting to do."

Sier grumbled something behind her hands and stalked off the pads.

At that moment, Picard and Riker came closer. Picard said, "Are you ready?"

"Almost sir," Data answered. "I must ask Commander Riker something."

"What’s it about?" Riker asked warily.

"I have...a rather personal request to make, about memories...."

Riker narrowed his eyes. "Wait...that was you. It...that...phantom...it was me, wasn’t it."

"I cannot answer that, sir. But the ‘phantoms’ we saw on the Bridge were all created from memories of people I have stored in my neural net. I must assume you met me recently?"

"Maybe I did," Riker said thoughtfully. "If I did, I guess the issue is moot. You’re going to ask about keeping my memories, right?"

Data nodded, with a subdued expression.

"Doesn’t look like it matters. I’ve been dragged around all over unwillingly enough as it is, guess you can add one more thing to the list." He sounded extremely irritated.

If it were possible, Riker would have thought Data looked sad, and very upset. The Android answered slowly, "I will not if you do not want me to."

Riker shrugged. "If it was you I saw in the hallway, it really doesn’t matter what I say. Quit being such a gentleman and get on with whatever the hell it is you’re doing."

"Yes sir."

Picard motioned for Geordi and Deanna to leave the pads, and then Picard ordered the transport. Data dematerialized off the pad in a sheet of blue light.

Then Riker turned to Picard. "So what the hell is he doing? I know he wanted to get to Yoilu pretty bad...but I don’t know why."

"He said he thought he could stop this...giant black worm-creature from destroying the universe," Picard answered. "He didn’t tell me exactly how; I believe he wanted to be sure Armus would not suspect anything. Data...the ‘future’ one, the one who kidnapped me, showed it to me while I was on his ship."

"Armus...damn this just gets stranger and stranger." Riker thought for a moment, then went pale. "I think...I think I know how...."

"What do you mean, Will?" Picard asked, confused.

"Why would Armus be important? It’s just evil, an evil life...I imagine it would be poisonous for a Vstrak."

"Vstrak?" Picard asked, while Sier removed her hands from her mouth, and Geordi and Troi joined them.

"Vstrak are a new species we made contact with while you were missing, Captain," Troi offered.

"And their favorite food is living machines," Sier added, lashing her tail.

"That worm thing you saw? It’s an ancient Vstrak," Riker finished.

Picard stood still. "...Damn."

When Data materialized as near to Qctvtjstryu as the Enterprise could manage, he was not quite prepared for the sight, or the shaking ground. He could deal with the ground, though it troubled him to see the faint fault lines in it...but there was no way to prepare for the enormous size of the Vstrak he now went to face. Bigger than a continent...its ‘arms’ waved around like grotesquely large snakes, ones that could flatten cities if the Youlirans had ever really built any.

It was a staggering sight, outside the realm of any experience Data had had, and he suspected, outside most all experience...except for the Yoilurans.

But he had something to do. No use waiting. So he ran, as fast as he was able, faster than all but the rarest of races, and he leapt up on Qctvtjstryu’s side, clinging to the slick black flesh with his strong hands.

And he was known. Qctvtjstryu stopped, the black specks floating and zipping through the air searching for food all paused in their flight. "Give the name! Qctvtjstryu knows there is another." Its voice was huge, deafening, as large as it was itself. If he had been other than he was, Data would never have been permanently deprived of hearing.

"The name given is Data," he said, in proper Vstrak. He knew this one was very old, and he had to speak properly to it or it might simply make a swift movement and send him flying into the quick-draining ocean of mercury in offence.

"Data," Qctvtjstryu boomed, "why has Data come to Qctvtjstryu? Qctvtjstryu feels such power in Data...Data should not have come, for Data will be eaten, like all else."

Data paused, and after a moment, began climbing higher, as fast as he was able on the slippery side of the Vstrak. It was far more than scaling a mountain, but he hoped he would not have to climb far. "Data has seen the might of Qctvtjstryu...Data wishes to give the power...." It was not an out-right lie.

"Is Data stupid Kwi?"

"Data has been compared to Kwi...but Data has been told the taste is better."

He could feel he had gained much more of the Vstrak’s divided attention. The black specks that were its mouths floated slowly to the ground, or returned to its hulking body. "The taste is better, so Data says. And Data is still stupid Kwi, to come and be caught so easily."

"But Data has more...more than Kwi. Has there not been many years since Qctvtjstryu dined upon Kwi? And Data offers more...more power, better taste...Does Qctvtjstryu perhaps not realize what so much power could mean?"

"Qctvtjstryu does, yes. If Data has as much as is claimed, Qctvtjstryu could reach Hs from here...stupid Kwi, let Qctvtjstryu see...." Suddenly one of the mammoth arms reached down and entwined Data around his waist. It was just the barest tip of the arm, the rest was so large...perhaps even as large as the Enterprise in width, but it was difficult to judge the size because of the enormity of the Vstrak fooled the senses, the same way a horizon would appear flat even though it was not.

Qctvtjstryu lifted Data off its body slightly, and shortly one of its many mouths arrived and wrapped itself on Data’s shoulder. He felt what Qctvtjstryu might have considered a ‘taste’, but far more power went out of him than had when Wstfln had done the same. He felt a good bit weaker for a moment, but he recovered quickly.

Nevertheless he could tell Qctvtjstryu was pleased. "Ha! Yes, Qctvtjstryu sees...oh, Qctvtjstryu doesn’t always remember the taste of Kwi, but Data Kwi is better by far than memory. Yes, and Data deserves to be eaten for the stupidity of being caught." And it proceeded to draw out energy from Data at an alarming rate...but perhaps more alarming was the speed at which it grew. Data hadn’t expected that. It would shorten the time the Enterprise had to rescue the Yoilurans by a considerable span, if the huge Vstrak continued to grow at the rate it was now.

Qctvtjstryu laughed, shaking the world. "Not like Kwi, no, Data replenishes...Qctvtjstryu feels it." It was correct—Data was not re-energizing as fast as he was being drained, but he was. He wondered for an instant how long it would be before he was drained enough to attempt his desperate plan...hours? Days? He calculated quickly and given consumption and re-energizing stayed constant, it would be 17 hours before his physical power was drained.

Then the Vstrak would move on to something else...that which killed.

The crew of the Enterprise was extremely busy. After Picard’s return and a short but intense exchange about what had occurred with him and with the Enterprise, they returned to transporting Yoilurans as fast as they were able. It seemed a blessing when Qctvtjstryu stopped eating everything in sight, but it was short-lived, for the creature began growing fast enough to be visible on screen.

The corridors of the Enterprise were filled with Yoilurans, and the starship traveled back and forth between Vs and the fast disintegrating Yoilu with as much speed as they could muster, beaming refugees to Vs and going back to get more.

Jhanai Dormung had attempted to stay on Yoilu as his duty, but Picard convinced him that the Yoilu would need him on Vs more than ever.

On the way back to pick up another load of Yoilurans, the crew and Dormung witnessed the terrible—Qctvtjstryu had finally grown so large that what was left of Yoilu exploded around it, sending tiny bits flying.

There was silence on the Bridge. Where once there was a planet, a surpassingly beautiful planet, there was now a giant monstrosity, a worm, writhing, and attempting to move away from the remains of Yoilu.

Dormung’s legs went out from under him; he fell to the ground, and made no sound. There was no way of knowing how many Yoilurans had just lost their lives in that instant where Qctvtjstryu’s gluttony had destroyed their world.

Bits of dust hit the Enterprise’s shields, lighting them up, more and more until the shields were entirely aglow. Dormung held out the red gem, the sign of his royalty. It burned, and it burned brighter in answer to the shields...a silent goodbye to those who died.

It had been several hours ago since Data had ceased being able to re-charge himself. But Qctvtjstryu still continued feeding, taking away from the Android the intangible that made him, like the Kwi, alive...Data wondered if there would be any way of getting that back.

He actually seemed dazed, and found it difficult to register so much as a thought when Yoilu exploded around him...or beneath him. The Vstrak was now bigger than Yoilu had been. Bigger than a planet...

Qctvtjstryu was committed...it had to be by now. And it wasn’t paying attention. Not paying attention to the little morsel it was almost finished with. The last bite...

Data lifted his torn arm and pressed his hand to the slippery star shape wrapped around him, and dropped the force field confining Armus in his arm.

It tried to escape...skin of evil...tried to slither its way back through Data’s neural pathways, but the energy pull from Qctvtjstryu was by now so fierce nothing could escape it.

In his mind Data heard the tar-creature screaming, "You lied! You lied!"...he didn’t quite know what it meant, but he probably would soon, for he had copied all its memories to preserve Tasha’s. Armus was part of Data now, so was Tasha...and Picard, and Riker, and the birds that Armus tortured to death...those that cast it off...uncounted numbers of living things...to keep the Asakans and the Omicron Thetan colonists company perhaps.

Qctvtjstryu flung Data away, stung by the sudden black energy when it had been consuming clear. Stung, more than stung—the Vstrak was choking on it. Qctvtjstryu tried to remove its mouth from Data, but he held it there; not by power or energy but by the simple fact that he was made of the strongest metal, and to move him without his consent was to move a mountain. And it choked on the black energy of Armus, flailing and writhing and shrieking.

Perhaps if it had not been choking, it could have pried Data’s hand away, because Qctvtstryu was by far strong enough to move mountains, but it couldn’t. The mouth was too small, and Qctvtjstryu in too much pain to do it.

Then Armus was gone, leaving only its substance behind and the copy Data had made...Qctvtjstryu almost recovered, almost made it...but it had drained to the dregs a poison that would kill it.

The last bite...

Jhanai Dormung staggered, raising himself on his large back legs. "It...Qctvtjstryu...look," he said, the translator adding shakiness to his voice to mimic the emotion his natural voice must have carried.

Captain Picard, who had stood from the center seat when Yoilu exploded, watched the worm carefully. It did seem different, no longer moving purposefully, but writhing as if in pain. "Ensign Sier, scan it!" he ordered.

After a few moments at the controls, Nazzi ad Sier reported, "Internal structure of the creature is disintegrating. It is as if it were falling apart from within."

Riker looked over at Picard. "You think he actually managed it?"

"It appears so, Will. If I had any idea what he had planned...but...it looks like it worked."

Dormung asked, "You had a plan to destroy it?"

Picard answered, "No...we didn’t; we didn’t even know about it until you contacted us, but...from what I gather, someone left a message in a bottle for one of our officers, a way to do away with that menace...he seems to have succeeded."

The Yoiluran flicked a long antenna. "He must have passed then, in space that way. I salute his bravery."

Riker glanced up at Sier. "Actually, your highness, he may not have. He’s hard to kill. Sier, scan the area, see if he’s still there."

"A marvel...do all of your people have this ability to live in space?" Dormung asked.

"No, not all of us," Picard responded.

"I have him, sir," Sier reported.

"Let’s bring him home then," Picard said. He tapped his badge. "Transporter room, beam Data up; Tactical will send you the coordinates."

"If you do not mind, star farer, I would like to meet this person," Dormung requested.

"Of course, your highness," Picard answered, and he, Riker, and Sier left the Bridge with the king of the Yoilu, on their way to the Transporter room.

No one noticed the raven-shaped ship that had been near the area disappear without a trace, never to return.

When they arrived, they were somewhat surprised to find Data lying on the transporter pad, seemingly asleep with his hand holding a large Vstrak mouth to his shoulder. The arm that held the quickly drying mouth was covered in black fluid. Sier was the first to approach, warily, flicking her tongue.

"I don’t smell that evil thing...but I smell its substance." She wiped a claw across Data’s arm and held it up, letting the thin fluid drip down her hand. Picard came closer to examine it while Dormung and Riker went to look at Data.

Picard touched the fluid and rubbed it between his fingers. "I wonder," he said to himself.

"Sir," Riker said, "I don’t think he’s dead, but it looks like it was a near thing."

Picard came over and kneeled next to Data. The Android’s eyes were open, slit...and he seemed to be watching something, but waving his hand in front of his eyes got no response. He tapped his comm badge. "Geordi, Beverly, we need you in Transporter room 2, ASAP."

They had moved Data to Engineering, as that was the best place to repair any damage that may have been done. Geordi had already started recharging Data’s physical energy stores, but he could sense that was not all that was wrong with his friend. He should have started coming around, if a bit weakly, as soon as his energy cells began recharging. No diagnostic turned up anything wrong, but Dr. Crusher’s medical scans showed a profound change in the two readings that had been different when Data had complained of being ‘tasted’ by a Vstrak. Black fluid continued to seep out of his arm, soaking into his uniform. The Vstrak mouth had been removed, but there was very little they could do about the position of his arm.

Dormung seemed to be very loath to leave Data, even though they had never met; so he stood nearby but out of the way of the Enterprise officers.

"Maybe we should contact the Vstrak," Dr. Crusher suggested, "certainly they would have an idea of how their energy transfer works."

Riker nodded, but said, "We can’t bring one aboard; normally they die outside of contact with Vs."

Sier clicked her claws. "The Kwi. We should contact the Kwi."

"I think you’re right," Picard said. "We need to make a trip back to Vs to drop off the rest of the Yoilurans anyway."

So he ordered the Enterprise to return to Vs, and as soon as they arrived, Picard contacted the Vs from a small screen in Engineering. Rjklyph answered. "Yes, welcome back, is there something Piikaaard needs?"

"Yes, I do. Do you know how to get into contact with the Kwi? We have an officer down and thought they might know how to repair him."

"Dat’e is the name?"

"Yes, it’s Data."

Rjklyph waved its upper tentacles. "Yes, Vstrak can contact Kwi. If Piikaaard does not mind, may Rjklyph request the nature of the problem? Rjklyph has some concern, of course, for the honored guests of Vs."

Picard stroked his chin. "It seems he fed himself to that Vstrak that was eating up Yoilu. Managed to kill it too, but not before Yoilu was totally destroyed."

Rjklyph seemed awestruck. "The Yoilu have been explaining what Qctvtjstryu had done...sad for the planet Yoilu. Yoilu are readjusting well...but Piikaaard says that Dat’e killed Qctvtjstryu?"

"Yes, that’s right."

"A feat...a feat! Songs will be sung, remembered among the Vs and the Yoilu alike! So Dat’e was Kwi after all?"

"No, not exactly...but...you could say that. Kwi with a very destructive weapon."

"Of course." Rjlkyph seemed to nod. "Rjklyph will connect Piikaaard to Kwi now."

After a few seconds, a silver-furred creature came on the screen. "This is Eliishhahnrah. I have heard from Rjklyph that you need our assistance?" the Kwi asked, her whiskers twitching.

"Yes, we have an officer down...he apparently just escaped dying at the hands of a very hungry Vstrak," Picard explained.

The Kwi seemed unimpressed. "We do not help those who are caught by the Vstrak...it is better for them to cease than to repair them."

Captain Picard very nearly became livid. "Look, Eliishhahnrah, this is an officer and a friend. He was not caught, but sacrificed himself to stop a Vstrak that destroyed an entire world!"

The Kwi narrowed her eyes. "You refer to the legend of Qctvtjstryu?"

"Yes, except it was certainly not a legend! Were you not made aware that the Yoilu have returned to Vs?"

The Kwi whispered something very fast and delicate to an associate. Then she turned back to the screen. "Rjklyph was less than clear about the situation. My apologies for my behavior. I was simply told there was an injured Kwi. I see this is not so. If you are willing, two of our top researchers will be sent to your ship. It is the best we can offer, for the Kwi do not generally attempt the healing of a Kwi that has been eaten."

"Thank you for your help," Picard said tersely. Eliishhahnrah nodded and the line was cut.

Picard ordered the two Kwi researchers beamed aboard and Sier to escort them to Engineering. After that, he turned to Riker and asked, "Did the Kwi you met seem so...unfriendly?"

"Well, one was insane, the other was...she seemed nice enough, if a bit fatalistic. I can’t imagine what it must be like for them, sentient and knowing you are the favorite meal on the menu."

"Well, I hope these two are nicer," Picard commented.

Shortly the two Kwi entered Engineering, gaping at the walls and controls.

Picard went to meet them. "Welcome aboard the Enterprise, I’m Captain Jean-Luc Picard." He almost extended a hand, but remembered in time what Riker had told him about their fur.

"Oh!" the shorter of the two exclaimed, apparently distracted. "We were just admiring this wonder of a ship. I am Niirihshehr, and this is my husband Shiirii. Pleased to meet you." The two Kwi bowed low. Picard returned the gesture.

"So," Shiirii asked, "where is the Kwi we are to see?"

Picard pursed his lips. "Data isn’t a Kwi. I’m sorry but I feel I have to make a point of that."

"Ah...because he is your friend and was not caught. This was explained to us. We don’t know what we can do, but let us see."

So Picard led the two Kwi to Data’s side. Shiirii immediately began touching Data carefully, as if he were an old fashioned doctor. His eyes were closed, and he appeared deep in thought. Then Niirihshehr began a similar examination, but with her eyes open.

Niirihshehr finished first. "Physically I sense no problem."

"No, we didn’t find anything either," Geordi answered. He looked over at Riker with a look of mild amazement on his face.

Riker whispered, "They’re natural machines, I guess it stands to reason." Geordi nodded.

Shiirii finished his examination and opened his eyes. "Program-wise he is normal, at least I assume so. I sensed no errors. If he were Kwi I would say recycle him and give the parts to a young family, but he isn’t, and I think he will hold on for a very long time. He is lost in memories...there are so many! It is my opinion he should be left alone for a while."

"If you will observe, he is aware—," Niirihshehr very carefully took Data’s arm and slowly pulled it down to his side. "I would not have been strong enough to do that unless he allowed me." Then she looked at her hand and grimaced. Finding nothing to clean what was left of Armus off her fur, she endured it in silence.

"So...you’re saying we should just let him...sleep?" Geordi asked somewhat incredulously.

Shiirii nodded. "He is aware and alive...but I think it will take him some time to regain his strength. We contacted Rjklyph and were told he did so once."

Picard nodded. "I have reason to believe you." He looked back at Data, who was watching something only he could see. The captain didn’t seem all that worried...Data had a charmed life...he had seen that first hand aboard the ship like a raven. "Thank you for your input. You are welcome to tour our ship if you would like." The Kwi seemed excited about it and gratefully accepted the offer.

When they left, Picard said, "I think we should follow their advice. I’m not saying they know more about Data than we do, but...having seen what I have, what we all have...well, I find it hard to believe that today is the day we’re losing him."

Dormung spoke for the first time in a while. "No, fate is not so cruel."

"Fate has nothing to do with it, not this time. Unless Fate has a name, and it’s Data."

* * *

The solitary light of one reddish star tiredly lit up the faces of the one planetoid and the few remaining asteroids. Other than that, no star shone. The red was dimmer, so dim that only one with eyes to see it could. Data stood again on what little ground was left in the universe. He could see the last remains of light...heat...flickering and fading.

Again, a flash of light to his side. Q was there again. "Well, did you have fun?" he asked, crossing his arms.

Data looked at Q and answered simply. "No." It had been bad on both sides, though admittedly manipulating his friends had been easier to do than absorbing the memories of Armus.

"Hmph." Then he uncrossed his arms and said, "I’ve been thinking...and wondering if maybe the next one might not need you in it."

"The next one?" Data asked quietly.

Q nodded. "The next universe. The next whatever. Maybe the one next door, or the one after this one. It’ll be a bit of a bumpy ride at first I suppose, but something’s bound to turn up that might strike your fancy."

The corners of Data’s lips turned up. "Possibly." He had made a promise to keep someone safe forever...and another to allow it to torment him for all the time history had left.

History had less than ten minutes left, if his estimates were accurate.

But forever...

"Q, if you did that, how long would it last? Would you continue to do so, at every end?"

Q waved his hand. "Pssh. I’m omnipotent, in case you had forgotten, dimwit."

"Every end." Data looked down at his feet, at the dust on his worn shoes. "So many ends."

"You oughta know by know that everything ends," Q mentioned. "But then again, it seems that there’s a new beginning around every corner."

"How uncharacteristically...cheerful of you," Data commented, not without some slight humor.

"Oh I know. It’s enough to make me gag. I’m sure someone wrote it inside a greeting card somewhere."

"I shall...consider it."

"Well you don’t have a lot of time left, so think fast," Q muttered.

"What time I have left might as well be an eternity, Q."

Leaving Q to his thoughts, Data turned and watched the last sun set.

The End

Author’s Notes—

Arggghhh...7 years in the making....I can’t believe it....!

Anyway, more notes to come, as there may be revision in the future...

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