something of yourself in him."
"No," said Riker firmly. "Very, very little.
To be honest, he reminded me of ..." Then he
stopped.
"Of who, Number One?"
Riker sighed. "He reminded me of my father."
Deanna chuckled, and Riker shot her a
look.
"Yes, well," said Picard, trying to hide
his own smile, "be that as it may ... due to the
delicate situation that we're in, we're going
to keep this on a need-to-know basis. However
... there is someone whom I feel that it's
important to consult. Someone who should be able
to afford some unique insight into our situation."
On the bridge, Data answered the signal
on his communicator. "Commander Data here."
Over the comm unit came the familiar,
clipped tone of Picard. "Mr. Data ...
I have a matter of some urgency to discuss with you.
Please report to your quarters immediately."
"My quarters?" Data tilted his head in
curiosity. "That is a rather unusual procedure,
Captain."
"We're in a rather unusual situation, Mr.
Data."
"Very well, Captain," said Data, standing.
"I will be there directly."
Lieutenant Barclay was walking down the
corridor, feeling disoriented, and he bumped
shoulders with Data just as he passed the android
officer's cabin. Data looked at him
curiously. "Lieutenant ... are you quite all
right?"
"I'm ... I'm fine, sir," said Barclay
hollowly.
"Very well." Data turned and walked into his
cabin.
Barclay sighed. He still didn't know
what to make of his holodeck experience. Perhaps
... perhaps he simply needed some regular,
normal RandR. Not something holodeck-generated.
Some real experience instead. Otherwise ...
Well ... was it possible that he was having
difficulty separating fantasy from reality? Was
he, in fact, totally losing touch with the world around
him?
No, he thought. It couldn't be. It simply
couldn't ...
He turned a corner and bumped shoulders with
Data.
Barclay stepped back, gasping in confusion.
"But ... but ..."
Data stared at him, his yellow eyes
glittering in curiosity. "Lieutenant, are you
quite all right?"
With an insane sense of d@ej@a vu,
Barclay stammered out, "I'm ... I'm fine,
sir."
"Very well," said Data, taking him at his ^w
and continuing on his way toward his cabin.
Barclay's head snapped back and forth like a
yo-yo. Then he sagged against a wall and whimpered
like a lost child.
Data entered his cabin and said, "Captain?"
The door closed behind him, but there was no sign
of Picard. "Captain?" he said again.
He sensed a presence behind himself and he spun
...
And a hand was already at his off-switch. He did
not even manage to get a look at his
assailant before he went limp.
The gold-skinned intruder lowered the insensate
android onto the bed and then stepped back. Then
he turned and studied his reflection in the
mirror.
Perfect, of course. But then again, why shouldn't
he be? He was, after all, the same
individual. He hadn't aged a day. His body
was the same, his brainpower undiminished. And his
ability to mimic voices--in this case,
Picard's--had been invaluable.
He tilted his head as a thought hit him. He
had no recollection of this event ever occurring.
But it had just happened in, effectively, his own
past. How was it possible for something to have happened
to him without his remembering it?
For that matter, how could Admiral
Riker be acting as if the entire notion of saving
Deanna Troi was just occurring to him? If he
be aware of everything that had already happened. But
unless he was engaging in a massive subterfuge
for Data's benefit ...
No. Data didn't think that was what was
happening. The only thing that he could conceive of was that
neither he nor Admiral Riker had any
memory of the events because, to all intents and
purposes, they hadn't happened yet. Right here,
right now, was where they were shaping all that was to come.
Except all that was to come had already been shaped.
Riker was trying to remold it to his own image.
Data, on the other hand, had to try to preserve
it.
Deanna Troi could not live to affect the
peace conference ... no matter what was required.
He removed the communicator from the
unconscious Data's uniform, removed the one
that he had taken from the same supplies room that
he had stolen the uniform from that he was now wearing, and
affixed Data's actual communicator to his
uniform front. No point in leaving anything
to chance.
He tapped the communicator. "Computer," he
said briskly, "locate Counselor Deanna
Troi."
For one moment he hoped that the computer would say,
"Deanna Troi is in the morgue." That would have
simplified things immensely.
Instead the computer said, "Deanna Troi is
in her quarters."
Data nodded. Then he went to the unmoving form
of Lieutenant Commander Data, made one
small change to it as a safety precaution, and
headed off to kill the ship's counselor.
CHAPTER 40
Picard had gone straight from Riker's cabin
to the Ten-Forward, and now he said in soft tones
to Guinan, after telling her as much as he knew,
"What do you think?"
"What do I think? I think it's possible,"
Guinan allowed.
"Would you know?" asked Picard. "If time had
shifted around us ... one way or the other ... would
you be aware of it? You've intimated in the past that
you have a sensitivity for such things."
"A sensitivity, yes, but I'm not
omniscient." She had just poured Picard a
drink and slid it over to him. Now she stared at
her reflection in the glass. "Look ... I
live day to day, same as you, Captain. Same
as anyone. Now if there's a large enough disturbance
in the space-time continuum ... particularly when it
has its origins in the past ... I might be
aware of it and be able to tell you that something's wrong.
But if it's happening right here, right now"--she
shook her head--?then I'm on the same roller
coaster as you are, Captain. And all we can do
is hold on."
He nodded. "For a moment I toyed with the notion
of canceling the peace conference. After all, it would
logically appear that an attempt on her life
would be connected with the conference. Or I could have all
the delegates questioned, or ..." Then he shoo
k his
head in exasperation. "But now we enter the realm of
temporal second-guessing. How far do I go,
beyond guarding Deanna? If none of this had
happened, then I would have no reason to take
extraordinary measures. Which means that I really
don't have any reason now."
"Best to let matters proceed then," said
Guinan.
Again Picard nodded.
At that moment Data walked into the
Ten-Forward. He looked around thoughtfully, then
glanced up as Picard gestured for him to come over.
Data took a place next to the captain, and
politely nodded to Guinan.
"A question, Captain," said Data. "Why are
Lieutenant Worf and three other security
guards stationed around Counselor Troi's
quarters?"
Picard glanced at Guinan and then lowered his
glass. "I will tell you, Data, and will inform
Commander Riker that you have been brought into our little
circle of secrecy. But it is to go no further.
Now the official reason is that an unknown
assailant, presently in the brig, made an
attempt on the counselor's life. That much
is, in fact, true. However, it's quite a bit more
involved than that ..."
Data, naturally, knew precisely how
involved it was.
He had gone to Troi's quarters, and when he
had seen the guards there ... including a scowling
Worf studying every passerby with intense
scrutiny ... he knew he had a problem. It
was, of course, perfectly likely that he could
force his way past Worf and the others. They were not
expecting a friendly face to turn on them, and he
could probably down them before they could mount a
serious defense. Deanna would have been dead before
any help could have been summoned, and once that
happened, the currents of time would have pulled him--
and presumably, Riker and Blair--back to their
own time.
But to attack her so overtly would have exposed that
there was more than one Data waltzing around on the
Enterprise. Or even worse ... what if the
present Data were unable to convince the others that he
had not, in fact, simply gone berserk? In one
scenario, they would have come to the realization that Data
still existed in the future ... and that knowledge could have
serious consequences. On the other hand, if they
simply decided that their own Data had become
unreliable, or even dangerous, they might
conclude that the only reasonable course of action was
to deactivate or dismantle him. If they did
that ...
Then what?
Would he, the Data of the future, then cease
to exist? And if he didn't exist, then who would
go back to stop Admiral Riker? But if he
didn't exist to come back to try to stop
Admiral Riker, then how could he possibly
kill Deanna Troi and set in motion the
events that could get himself shut off? And who ...?
It was this sort of self-involving confusion that had
once prompted Geordi LaForge to declare,
during one such discussion of a theoretical paradox,
"This is precisely why time travel gives me
nosebleeds."
Data didn't have a nosebleed. Data had
a situation.
But one way to remedy that situation was to get himself
"officially" brought into the information loop. Which was
precisely what he was doing now.
And once he had that information, it was just a matter
of determining the most effective way to proceed.
CHAPTER 41
There had been one change of security guards
since the captain ordered the guard. Worf,
however, had remained. This did not surprise
anyone. In similar situations, Worf
had displayed stamina that was, quite simply,
inhuman.
As a result, when Will Riker approached,
Worf turned to him with just as fierce a
protective glare as he had possessed since
he'd first taken his post.
"No one has seen or spoken to Counselor
Troi," Worf said, "except for a carefully
supervised visit by Dr. Crusher."
Riker nodded approvingly. "Good. Despite
everything that happened last night, she wanted to be
fresh for the peace conference." He tapped his
communicator. "Riker to Counselor Troi.
Are you awake, Deanna?"
"Yes, Commander. Awake and ready to go."
"Good." He gestured for Worf and the others
to follow, and they entered behind him. Worf observed
that Riker was wearing a phaser. Silently he
approved.
Deanna was standing there, looking radiant.
"How are you feeling today, Counselor?"
"Well," she said, extending her neck.
"Actually I wound up sleeping in a slightly
awkward position. My neck is a little stiff."
"Need me to get the kink out?"
"No." She smiled. "Actually ... the pain
isn't so bad. It reminds me that I'm
alive."
Riker returned the smile. "I can think of more
pleasurable ways to be reminded of being alive."
"Yes, Commander," she said dryly. "I'm
sure you can. Well"--she slapped her thighs and
rose--?ffthe peace conference, then."
They started down the hallway--Deanna,
Worf, Riker, and the guards. They attracted
curious glances as others walked past them in the
corridor, and in a low voice Deanna asked,
"Do I really require an entire entourage?"
"Just until we get to the conference room," said
Riker. "We've shifted the location, however, to the
high-security conference room. We've set up
a low-level null field that will detect any
sort of weapons. Once you're there you'll be
safe, and Worf and the others can return to their
duties."
"My duty," said Worf firmly, "is
to ascertain the safety of all personnel."
"And you've done an excellent job,
Worf," Deanna told him.
The Klingon merely grunted.
"Are you sure you're all right?" Riker asked
her.
Deanna nodded. "Right after you posted the
guards, Beverly came down to check me over."
"Yes, so I heard. "Carefully
supervised."'"
"Her instruments didn't detect anything
wrong with me. And yet I felt something ... or
at least, for a few moments, I had. That burning
sensation I mentioned. But then it vanished. I can
only assume that whatever was in that vial did
whatever it was supposed to do. I truly owe a
great debt to ... both of you."
"I know," said w. "We both do. I was
thinking about it last night ... and maybe I was a
little hard on him. I mean, it took real guts
to do what he did. I don't know if I could have
done it."
She patted him on the arm. "Don't worry,
Commander. I suspect the answer is yes ... but
hopefully you'll never have to find out."
In the quarters of Commander Riker, Adm.
William Riker crouched in a corner and pulled
at the heel of his boot.
He had kept a careful eye on his
chronometer and now said, "Computer ... locate
Deanna Troi."
The communications function for the cabin had been
deliberately disabled by Commander Riker.
Wisely, he had anticipated the possibility
that his older self might try to take advantage
of their natural voice similarities and use that
function to summon help from some unknowing individ-
ual. But the locator function still worked just fine.
"Deanna Troi is on deck
twenty-three," replied the computer.
"Probable destination?"
The computer did not hesitate. "The Sindareen
peace conference is scheduled for conference room
twenty-three-D. Deanna Troi is among
the personnel scheduled to attend the conference. She
is presently one hundred and fifty meters from
the conference room and moving towards it. The
likelihood that her destination is the conference room
is approximately--"
"Never mind. I get the idea."
He twisted the heel of his boot and it came
clean off. Holding his palm under it, he upended
it.
A miniature phaser fell into his palm.
He nodded approvingly and snapped the heel
back in place.
As he did so, he prayed that he had done the
right thing in withholding the information that he had. He could
have told them so easily that the Sindareen were being
duplicitous. Flushing that knowledge out into the open might
have ended all of this ... especially if it was, in
fact, the Sindareen who were somehow behind the whole
thing.
But he had spoken the truth to Picard. He was
indeed treading on very shaky ground and was not at all
sure just how far he should go in giving them information.
Should he tell them about the Sindareen? Should he
tell them about the fact that perhaps Data himself--
Data from the future--might be wandering the ship?
Certainly if he had been Data, that's what
he would have done: gone back himself. Who knew the
ship better? Who could blend in more effectively
than someone who was already supposed to be there?
He couldn't just tell them all these things. Where
would it end? Worse ... what would it begin?
But he could take action himself ... actions without
explaining them. Be Deanna's guardian
angel. Her knight, her cowboy riding to the