Cybersong (19 page)

Even in the Maquis he had never encountered such poor military bearing and lack of respect. And Chakotay was not about to tolerate it.

“Ensign Mandel, this is Starfleet, and you don’t get to say that you’re too busy right now. You will accompany the away team to the alien vessel, where your computer skills will be more than well utilized.

Ensign Kim can take care of the rest of this task, since you have outlined the parameters so well.”

“I thought he was dying,” Mandel said glumly.

“He is recovering. Frankly, if he were in better shape, I would prefer to have him along on the mission. Not only is he familiar with the computer we are exploring, he also doesn’t have an attitude problem.”

Chakotay held his voice in check, but he couldn’t keep his anger out of what he said. “But he isn’t well enough to walk around yet, let alone put on an environmental suit and download alien computer logs in a hostile environment. You are.”

At least Chakotay did not say that he would far prefer Harry Kim’s company as well. He wanted to, but the discipline of years of leadership had trained him well enough that he was able to bite back the words.

This Ensign Mandel infuriated him. She probably infuriated everybody who knew her. No wonder she was stuck off in Stellar Cartography where she didn’t have to deal with human beings.

Chakotay did not have a good feeling about this mission. He was certain the foreboding, or most of it, was strictly his own.

Even if he didn’t think much of Mandel’s social skills, he had to admit that she, and everyone else on the away team, knew what they were doing. It was a good group. They were going to find the technology needed to get home while Voyager broke free of the grip of the program that was embedded in their computer. They were going to … be alone forever. No one would ever understand and they would be trapped in the dark, in the cold. Alone alone alone. Reaching out to life, to warmth, only to be rejected again and again. Why did no one love him? No one ever stayed. …

Stop it! Chakotay told himself. It was the alien. These were not his own thoughts.

Still, even as he knew that, he couldn’t stop hearing the words in his head.

I do what they say, what they want. I give to them and they all hate me. I need. I need. I can’t be alone anymore. Please come to me.

Be my friend.

Chakotay sank down in the corridor holding his head in his hands.

Resisting it, resisting the thought. Fighting to keep up his own walls, his integrity. He was afraid that the thing would take over his mind … like water. This was another voice. Quieter than the insistent screaming of the alien, and perfectly assured. Be like water.

Now that you know what it is you can let it flow past you and into forever. Let it go.

He felt the recognition. It was his totem. It had been with him since he had first taken up the quest when he had been taught by his father and medicine chiefs back home. It had always been with him, always given him good advice.

Now it said to flow with it, not to resist.

It was difficult. It was one of the most difficult things Chakotay had ever attempted. To open his mind to what he was certain would be invasion took courage.

Slowly he permitted himself to unclench. To let it be. It was not him, it was not from his being. It was an alien thing, and it was just trying to talk in the way that it knew. He recited that as if it were a mantra. The alien just wants to talk. It does not want your mind.

Your mind is your mind. If you let it go, it will flow through you and outward and leave you refreshed and cleaned.

He was not sure if the image was entirely true, but it was enough. He tried to imagine it as separate from himself and greet it as he would any stranger he considered a potential friend.

“Hello, traveler. It is good to meet you in this place.”

To me? You talk to me? The alien sounded like a child in his mind.

Its emotions certainly were childlike, simple to the extreme.

“Yes, I speak to you,” Chakotay answered carefully, as he would a bright and frightened child. “It is going to be fine. Just tell us where we can find you, and you can come with us. You won’t be lonely anymore.”

The alien child-voice giggled in his mind. I am here, it told him.

Here, all of here. Will you stay with me?

Maybe it was the indigo angel. Maybe it was the hopelessness of the aliens’ deaths. Chakotay didn’t know, but he did not trust the innocence and fear in the child-voice in his head.

How often had he heard the old adage that telepathic communication couldn’t lie? And yet he suspected that what he was hearing was—not exactly a lie, but a misrepresentation.

“We are coming over now,” Chakotay said. “We will be there and we will meet you. Will you come out and show yourself? We haven’t seen you yet.”

Another giggle was muffled quickly. You have seen me. I am beautiful.

Chakotay did not reply. He was certain that the angels were malevolent and artificial.

His head hurt from the intrusion, though he knew clearly that it was the only way he could make the thing leave him alone.

You hate me! It screamed at him, anger blasting at him from inside his own skull. You want to get rid of me. You’re just like all the others. All the others. I won’t let you.

“Mr. Chakotay, are you all right?” Kes asked, bending over. She had unslung her medical pack and laid it on the deck, ready to report for the mission.

Chakotay opened his eyes slowly. “I’ll be fine. Whatever it is was talking to me. I think I made it angry.”

Kes nodded seriously. “I know what you mean. I could feel anger all around when I got off the turbo. At least I’m getting better at knowing when it’s it and when it’s me.”

Chakotay managed a slight smile. “It’s just like a spoiled child throwing rocks at grownups,” he said wryly. “Which makes it a lot more dangerous than a consciously evil adult.”

Kes cocked her head quizzically. “I don’t understand,” she said.

“A child can’t do the damage an adult can do.”

“Look out there,” Chakotay countered. “All those dead ships, all those dead people, because one child is running rampant. Well, come on, let’s get to it.”

“What are we going to do when we find it?” Kes asked.

“I don’t know what anyone else plans to do,” Chakotay answered, “but personally, I intend to take it over my knee and give it a good spanking.”

***

“Captain, could I talk to you for a moment?” Harry Kim asked via the comm link. He wanted to get up and go to the bridge himself.

He couldn’t. The Doctor, or someone, had taken his clothes.

“I’ll be down shortly, Mr. Kim,” the captain had said.

Harry Kim was a little embarrassed that the captain had to come all the way to sickbay to talk to him. There was the fact that he wasn’t really strong enough to make it as far as the turbolift, let alone the bridge. “Maybe tomorrow,” Kes had said.

And he certainly was recovering well. Even The Doctor had shown grudging approval. Tom had shown up with a replicated dinner again last night and lunch just two hours ago. He was lucky to have such good friends.

But he could still use another helping of that Andorian spice cake.

The last time he had been this hungry was plebe year at the Academy, playing three sports and still growing.

But that still didn’t make him feel better about having to ask the captain to come to him instead of going to her with what he had found.

And he would at least have preferred to be in uniform, not in the baggy pajamas that The Doctor had insisted that he wear over the various monitors and drug patches affixed to different parts of his body.

“A uniform will only displace them,” The Doctor had said preemptively.

“And I want those medication distributions in good working order.”

Kim knew when he was beaten. So he tried not to think about the clothes, and to tell the truth the pajamas were very comfortable.

Though he really would prefer that the captain not see him in such a state of undress.

Being in recovery had not slowed down his mental ability. Sure, he got tired quickly and couldn’t sit up for a long period of time. But the frequent breaks where he had nothing to do but lie down and stare at the ceiling had given him the perspective to see exactly what had been done in the operating system.

Daphne Mandel had identified the bogus code, but Kim saw that she hadn’t realized everything that the alien had done to them. It was subtle, global, insidious. It was brilliant.

And as he lay with nothing else to occupy him, he began to get an idea of what kind of creature had sabotaged them so effectively.

What kind of being could be so very good with their computer language to create what was essentially a virus that wouldn’t kill the computer but would eventually destroy Voyager.

It was twisted. An enemy would be more straightforward. Kim knew enough about Cardassians, Klingons, and Romulans to know that there was a certain level of honor in enmity. And it frightened Harry Kim in a way other things had not frightened him.

Oh, sure, he’d been scared before. Plenty of times.

But most of his fears were reasonable. This one wasn’t. This was something that logic and good sense wouldn’t overcome. This was something that was intended to kill them for no reason he could discern.

And the programming was intricate, elegant in a way that inspired his mathematically trained mind. He wanted to create programs like this, make things so utterly efficient and graceful in so very few lines.

The perfection of programming was at odds with the functions it delineated. To Harry Kim it was an abomination that a program so perfectly composed should create such utter devastation.

The captain arrived in sickbay. Harry tried to stand, but Janeway waved her hand. “No, Mr. Kim, you’re still recuperating.

What is it you needed to tell me?”

Kim took a deep breath. “I’ve been working on this code only for a few hours, Captain,” he said. “But I think that I’ve solved the food problem. There was a line here that propagated into the life-support system that raised the temperature of the refrigeration units by two degrees Celsius.”

“Not enough to notice, but enough to spoil the food,” the captain said.

“Very good work. We can at least stop looking for some other explanation, and I’ll have the away team check the alien ship for life-support changes early in their contact.”

“Another thing, Captain. This one I’m not sure of at all,” he said hesitantly.

The captain smiled. “Mr. Kim, at this point any educated speculation is better than what we have to go on right now.”

“Well,” Kim continued, “I’ve been looking at the way this virus is written and how it functions inside the operating system. It isn’t meant to shut the computer down, but to attack very subtle and vulnerable areas of our life-support. Like the refrigeration units.

Between that and the fact that the engines don’t respond to the helm or anything else, well, I’ve been looking at this and trying to figure out who could have written such a thing.

“Because it’s really good programming, Captain. Anyone in the Computer Science department at the Academy would have been proud of being able to write this. Only who out in the Delta Quadrant has ever seen our programming before, let alone could write it?”

“Mr. Tuvok has raised some of those points,” Janeway said.

“With all due respect, Captain, It. Tuvok is not a programmer,” Kim countered immediately. “There is a difference between decent code that would do what this has done and genius. This work that I’m pulling out of here, this is genius. No one can be taught to do this. No, I’ve thought about what kind of person could learn our operating language this quickly and easily and be able to program on this level.

“I don’t think it’s any kind of person at all, Captain. I think it has to be some artificial intelligence.”

“Then no wonder it attacked the life-support system but left our computer intact,” Janeway said, musing.

“Exactly, Captain,” Harry replied. “Maybe a crazy one that kills off the living inhabitants of a ship but leaves the computer running.”

The captain looked at the lines of code marching across the screen.

“No, not crazy, Mr. Kim,” she said, and her voice sounded remote. “It knows that the people won’t survive, so it doesn’t try to save them.

It tries to entice the computer as a companion and then … Mr. Kim, I think it’s trying to be humane.

Create a quick and certain death rather than a slow and lingering one.”

“But, Captain,” Harry protested, horrified. “Starvation, general cooling of the living quarters, loss of oxygen, this isn’t a merciful death.”

“Not to us, no,” the captain agreed. “But then, we understand what that means. To this computer, well, it’s doing the best it can. The best it knows how. It isn’t trying to be cruel.”

“How can you be so sure, Captain?”

“Because no species could survive building a computer that thought nothing of killing off its creators. Your theory fits the facts as we know them and the common sense that any spacefaring people have to have. Mr. Kim, you have done truly extraordinary work with this.”

“Thank you, Captain,” Harry Kim said, and blushed. He wasn’t used to such high praise. And though Janeway was never grudging with her compliments, she also was not profligate with them.

“I have to tell the away team immediately. I suggest you rest, Mr. Kim. You have earned it,” Janeway said as she left sickbay.

“I suggest you listen to the captain. There’s a very good chance that will be the only decent medical suggestion she makes today.”

Harry Kim sighed. He hadn’t seen The Doctor, didn’t know the hologram was listening. Not that it mattered, only that he had been discovered and sent back to bed. Again.

The away team heard the news together as the captain explained what Harry Kim had discovered.

“An AI?” Torres asked, amazed. “But why wouldn’t it try to save the people rather than kill them off.”

“It’s only a child. Maybe it doesn’t even realize that it’s not helping,” Kes suggested.

“What makes you think it’s a child?” Mandel asked. “It’s an AI, it doesn’t have any personality traits. If it is an AI at all.