Cybersong (25 page)

“Ms. Mandel, I only want to talk to you,” Janeway said, taking the comm. “I have no desire to carry around someone in the brig for our entire journey, and frankly, we can’t afford it. We need all the expertise we can muster to make it back.”

“So you’ll take me back and it’ll be just like before, only now everyone will think I’m nuts. Great.”

“If you insist on behaving like a child, then I won’t have any choice,” the captain said, exasperated. “But I would rather give you a better option. I think I have one. You’ll have to talk to me, though, and that would be easier if we could beam you aboard once we’re inside the other ship and don’t have to worry about the unstable transporter lock.”

Dead silence came through the comm. Janeway wondered if Mandel would just close down the board.

“Once we’re inside,” she said. “And he’ll have to listen, too.

Nothing in secret. He promises to take care of me, and if you try anything, he won’t let you leave. He won’t let you take me away.”

“That’s fine,” the captain agreed.

“We’re going too slow,” Mandel said. “I’m too close to the hull.”

“No, you’re not,” Paris told her. “It looks that way, but you’re fine.

Whatever you do, keep your hands off the controls. The crack isn’t very wide, and you don’t have any leeway here at all.

Just sit tight. The coordinates I gave you will bring you in safely.”

Janeway watched as the shuttle seemed to drift into the opening.

It did look too close to the crack for her comfort.

“That AI’s got to be trying to take over her helm and is pulling her too far,” Paris said. “On my coordinates it should have gone straight down the middle.” Then the shuttle disappeared entirely, enveloped in the giant dead ship.

“Just get me in there, Mr. Paris,” Janeway said, her voice cold and determined.

This was her second time into this alien environment, and yet it still was not comfortable and familiar. The immensity of the structure and the tangle of discharging power cables made her think of primordial Earth, dark and alive with volcanoes and turbulent winds.

“Mr. Paris, beam Ms. Mandel aboard.” Janeway just hoped that the ensign hadn’t disposed of her comm badge in the interim. But Daphne Mandel’s form took shape and became solid in the single transporter niche.

The programmer’s face was set, angry. Ready to jump, Janeway thought.

That only made the captain feel sad and weary and far too old. Daphne Mandel had no reason to mistrust anyone on Voyager, especially not the captain.

“Ensign Mandel,” the captain began. “Please sit down. I think we have something to discuss, and I have an offer to make you.”

Janeway held up her hand as Mandel opened her mouth. “Don’t say anything yet. Hear me out.

“It appears that you left Voyager with the goal of returning here to remain with this computer personality. Is that true?”

Daphne Mandel nodded.

“Can you tell me why?”

And then Mandel exploded, words pouring out over each other in a rapid rush. “When I was here and I had that link, that was like nothing you can imagine. I could see, I could think in a way I never understood before. I could use his memory, his speed, his data. I never knew it could be like that. So wild, so beautiful. I had to come back. I had to have it forever. I can’t live knowing what that feels like and not being able to touch it. To have all that power, all that knowledge …

“And he needs me. I can help him. The mind is so great, but the personality is so young. He trusts me. He likes me. He wants me to stay, he’ll help me. No one has ever really liked me before. No one on Voyager will be sorry to see me go. No one in the Alpha Quadrant really wants me back. He’s the only being I’ve ever met that really wants me.”

Janeway looked at the younger woman and nodded. Such a waste, she thought. Mandel was so gifted. But something had happened to her personality at some point that made her unable to relate to most people.

She was truly sorry. It was all wrong. Someone with Daphne Mandel’s talents should not be so isolated.

But she was not a counselor. She was captain of a starship. And she had a solution that would suit them all.

She spoke very slowly, deliberately, weighing each of her words before she said them aloud. “Ensign Daphne Mandel, do you have any desire to nurture and teach this artificial personality so that it learns a respect for living sentient creatures?”

Mandel blinked in surprise. “Of course. That’s only normal. He just doesn’t know better now, but I know, I know I could teach him. He hasn’t attacked you, hasn’t tried to reinvade Voyager’s systems again because I asked him not to. I told him that I was coming back and so that wasn’t a reasonable option.”

The captain smiled. “You do know that it was the flour that made you capable of telepathic communication?”

Daphne nodded vigorously. “Of course. I got The Doctor to tell me all about his research. He’s so enthusiastic. In fact, he is something of my role model for the computer. A complete entity that is intelligent, capable but also interested in contributing to the general population.

“So it was like a gift when I found the flour in the shuttlebay.

That was when I got the idea of coming back. The flour was already there. And I knew that there was power for the replicator, so I’d have plenty of food. And inside, when he does regulate the life-support, there is plenty of air and energy and heat. So I’d be able to live here indefinitely.”

She was expanding on her plan like a schoolgirl who is proud of having thought of everything.

It was right, Janeway acknowledged to herself as she listened to all of Daphne Mandel’s plans. This was the best option for all of them, and it would protect the region besides, end the ongoing trapping of ships for an AI’s amusement. Maybe someday it would even contribute more.

Kathryn Janeway stood at formal attention, a somewhat difficult feat in the tiny shuttle. “Ensign Daphne Mandel, I hereby transfer your duty from Voyager to Federation Ambassador to this entity. Let the record show that you have been honorably assigned to prevent further attacks against sentient spacefaring peoples and to one day bring this AI, and perhaps its builders, into greater participation with all the peoples of our galaxy.

Congratulations, Ambassador.”

The captain stepped forward and gave Mandel a formal handshake.

Tom Paris followed with a salute and called her Ambassador Mandel.

“Mr. Paris, transport the ambassador and her belongings to her new quarters. And then, let’s go home.”