The Sky's The Limit Part 24

It fascinated her to study Sofia Borges's work on the Tamarian language. Deanna recalled Picard describing how he had divined the meanings of Dathon's phrases from context, tone, and body language. The Tamarians, it seemed, did the same on a much deeper level. As with Mandarin or Betelgeusian, variations of meaning and syntax were communicated through pitch. Body language and gesture conveyed other specifics much like a sign language. Borges's insight had enabled the revision of universal translator protocols to record these tonal and gestural cues-often too subtle for most humanoids to read-and gain a fuller translation as a result. She'd also recognized how integral their written language was to their communication, particularly where mathematics, science, and engineering were concerned. Though the emphasis was different, the Tamarians saw writing as an extension of their normal communication. Their language was one of symbols and images, and that had always included physical symbols, whether ritual objects or written markings, as much as verbal or gestural ones.

One of the most intriguing things was how closely their mathematical notation was tied to their musical notation. Borges had recordings of Tamarian engineers and programmers literally singing equations and instructions to one another. Even in ordinary speech, numerical information could be conveyed through the pitch of a Tamarian's vocal harmonics, though it could be hard for human ears to discern the nuances. (This answered the infamous question one linguist had posed to ill.u.s.trate the apparent limitations of Tamarian as a practical language: "Mirab-his-sails-unfurled factor what, sir?") While Deanna studied for the pending negotiations, Data, Geordi, and Borges's team finished up their work on reprogramming the emotion chip. The team seemed to be getting along more effectively, but Deanna could tell that Data was suppressing his frustration and unease rather than truly overcoming them. She did what she could to instruct him in anger management but considered it a palliative for the deeper problem. For what it was worth, though, Data had an advantage. For humanoids, muscular tension and fatigue played a key role in perpetuating a bad mood, but Data had no muscles per se to tense. That made it easier for him to cast off anger and anxiety, but it forced her to adapt her methods, since he couldn't use physical relaxation as a means toward emotional focus.

In time, Data and Geordi decided they were ready for a test. Deanna watched uneasily as the Tamarian cognition program was uploaded into Data's emotion chip. These were uncharted waters; there were few cases of an individual changing the very way he thought and perceived the world, except in instances of brain damage-or that of Data's own installation of Soong's chip. And he was still new at adjusting to that. But despite her concern for a patient and a friend, Deanna had to admit to great curiosity about the results and what they would mean to the science of psychology.

Once Data rebooted and opened his eyes, he looked around in confusion. "Data? You okay?" Geordi asked.

"Omicron Theta. Tripoli. What?" He blinked, looking around in confusion. "The crew on the bridge. When the Satarran scan occurred."

"What does that mean?" Borges asked.

"He's referring to a time when we had our memories erased," Deanna told her. "I think he's using it as an image of confusion, disorientation." She moved closer. "Data, concentrate on my words. Do you recognize me?"

"Daughter of the Fifth House."

"That's right." She had never thought she'd be glad to hear that pretentious t.i.tle her mother loved to invoke. "Can you understand what I'm saying? Do you know where you are?"

"Holmes in the drawing room," he said thoughtfully. "The Dancing Men." Enlightenment dawned on his face. "Sato with the Anti-anna!" Deanna recognized the allusion to the famous moment when inspiration had struck the inventor of translator linguacode, while Geordi was able to identify the Dancing Men as a code broken by Sherlock Holmes. Apparently Data was deciphering regular communication sufficiently to understand it, though communicating in his own variant of Tamarian idiom.

Once they were satisfied the process had worked, Data was deactivated again and his chip reset to default parameters. To everyone's relief, he appeared to function normally once reactivated. It seemed to prove that the reprogramming technique would be a valid means for communicating with the Tamarians. After a second test confirmed the results of the first, they decided it was time to proceed.

The team traveled to the rendezvous point aboard the U.S.S. Krishna. As before, the Tamarians had chosen a meeting place midway between Federation territory and their own. This time, they allowed Data, Troi, and Borges to beam aboard their vessel, though a sizable contingent of armed guards met them in the transporter room. "Don't worry," Borges told Deanna sotto voce. "It's part of the ritual."

After a period of waiting, the Tamarian amba.s.sador and her aides entered and stood before the party. Amba.s.sador Denin touched the small metal talismans attached to her tunic in a certain sequence and spoke, the translator filling in some of the nonverbal meanings. "Menos [king] of Kyjo [City]. Menos at the [city] gates. [Guarded welcome.] His feet unmoving [determined]."

Data strode forward, making similar gestures. "Uzani [king] of Fenmir. Uzani [arriving] at the gates. His army on the plain [waiting]." He removed his phaser and laid it at Denin's feet. "Uzani. His sword [and theirs] laid down [in friends.h.i.+p]. His neck bare [vulnerable, trusting]."

Denin removed a small but sharp talisman from her tunic and tapped it ritually on Data's exposed neck. "Uzani risen [accepted]. Uzani [guest] at Kyjo."

As Data rose and began a ritual exchange with Denin-a UFP insignia pin for one of her talismans-Deanna sighed. The translation may be a bit clearer now, but it was prettier before.

The ensuing dialogue went on for hours, yet it served as little more than an introduction. Tamarian was not a compact language; it was built more for poetry than efficiency. When Data was "tuned" back to normal afterward, he confirmed that the negotiations would be lengthy. From what he had divined, the extensive enactment of tales would be a vital element. "I suspect they teach their own children in much the same way," Data told the others in Krishna's briefing room. "Through repet.i.tion, the young gradually learn the meanings of individual words through their overall context and usage, rather than being taught each word discretely." Deanna reflected that a similar method had probably been used for millennia on Earth and elsewhere before anyone had conceived of schools or grammar books.

Gaining mutual cultural insight, Data explained, was vital to the contact process. "The Tamarians are migratory by nature and have been traveling among the worlds of their home sector since before they even developed warp drive. Like the ancient Polynesians of Earth or the Shesshran of Daran V, their history is replete with cases of rediscovery and reconquest of colonial populations during successive waves of new migration. As such, contact incidents play an integral role in their history and culture. It is not enough for them simply to be aware of a neighbor's existence. Their history tells them that encroachment between neighbors will inevitably occur, and it is imperative to discern whether a more powerful neighbor's intentions are benevolent or rapacious. This is why they have made multiple efforts to establish contact with the Federation-in the hopes of resolving this lingering question."

"But those contacts were decades apart," Geordi said. "Doesn't seem so urgent."

"Only because our time sense is more linear than theirs," Data reminded him. "Now that we have achieved initial contact and sought a dialogue, the question has become more urgent to them. If we do not successfully demonstrate our ability to coexist harmoniously with the Children of Tama, they will see no other choice but to declare war on us. Partly out of self-defense, partly because that is simply what the mythic duality demands."

"So the stakes are even higher than we knew," Borges said. "We can't afford to fail."

After the briefing, Deanna pulled Data aside. "I must say, I'm impressed at how patient you were with the Tamarians' rather...inefficient way of conducting a dialogue."

"Thank you, Counselor, but my emotion chip deserves the credit. When my mind is functioning in Tamarian mode, I have little sense of the pa.s.sage of time."

"Well, maybe that could help you improve your patience the rest of the time."

Data shook his head. "I doubt it. All it does is throw my problem into relief. It is taking all my control to avoid outbursts of impatience with others."

She frowned. "Data, I think there are still underlying issues you aren't allowing yourself to confront."

He closed his eyes, and she felt his attempt to rein in his irritation. "I am not surprised that you have not moved past that yet. You are a dog with a bone. A reyfel on the scent. Granny Ku'ula when her mind is made up. The Zerekian Oak before the flood."

Deanna stared at him. "Data?"

He broke off, pondered for a moment, and gave her a small smile. "Nothing to worry about, Counselor. A touch of metaphor spill-over." He chuckled to himself. "If you will excuse me, Daughter of the Fifth House." He walked away, still giggling. Deanna watched his receding form with concern.

Deanna reported her observations to Geordi, but when he reset Data back to Tamarian mode the next day, his diagnostics gave no indication of instability. "At least, nothing outside expected parameters," he told her. "Going back and forth like he's doing...it's bound to confuse anyone a little. But he still pa.s.sed all the perceptual tests. This is Data we're talking about, after all."

She wasn't rea.s.sured. "Does any of us know what that means anymore? Even Data?"

But she had no grounds for vetoing Data's role in the day's ritual. This involved an exchange of myths and stories to give each group insight into the other's heritage and worldview. The Tamarians had several planets' worth of myth and literature at their beck and call, and Deanna absorbed it with interest. (She was particularly curious about the lore of Shantil III, home of the Darmok myth. The Enterprise computer had held only fragmentary references to its mythos, courtesy of a summary in an anthropological text discovered in the ruins of Promellia. But Shantil had been one of the Tamarians' first alien contacts, apparently providing them with much of their mythic vocabulary as well as their advanced technology.) On his part, Data regaled the Tamarians with the lore of the Federation, acting out tales ranging from the Ramayana and Shakespeare to Tarbolde and the Gestes of Andor. Like them, he employed a detached nonverbal mode to indicate that the tales were being told for ritual or didactic purposes rather than as earnest metaphors for his own intentions. Given the violence and venality inherent in so much of ancient literature, this was a vital distinction.

But Deanna sensed something changing as Data related Oth.e.l.lo's murder of Desdemona-something that had been lingering beneath the surface and was now beginning to emerge. "Oth.e.l.lo with a light. Desdemona in her bed," she heard. She had set her translator to tune out the annotations and render only the basic words, doing her best to read the subtexts on her own. "The light quenched. Prometheus with the fire. Desdemona restored?" He shook his head. "Shaka. When the walls fell.

"The rose on the vine. The rose in the hand? The rose withered. The rose's scent-Justice, her sword broken?" He shook his head. "Tears fallen from heaven.

"Desdemona awake. Desdemona pleading! The handkerchief. Ca.s.sio. His beard! Desdemona on her deathbed!" He was growing more agitated by the second. Before Deanna could call out, he cried, "Down, strumpet!" and lunged at Amba.s.sador Denin, reaching for her throat.

Deanna was the only one who'd sensed trouble before the sudden attack, and given Data's speed and strength, she knew she had to act fast. Luckily, Tamarian ceremony demanded she carry a phaser at all times, as their officers carried ceremonial daggers. She wasn't sure its stun setting would affect Data, but she drew and fired anyway, hoping for the best. But his hands were already on Denin's throat, and her beam had little effect.

But it was enough. Distracted, he let the amba.s.sador drop and came at her. "Not dead?" She upped the level and fired again, knocking him off his stride but only briefly. Don't make me do this, she thought.

Just then, Geordi moved in behind Data's back, jabbing his manual shutdown control. Data fell limp and hit the floor, and Deanna clutched her heaving chest.

But her relief was short-lived. A wave of fury poured over her from the Tamarians. "Zinda!" cried an aide who knelt over the gasping amba.s.sador. "His face black! His eyes red!"

Borges rushed forward to try to smooth things over. "Callimas at Bahar. Callimas on bended knee."

"Chenza at court!" the aide cried, silencing her. "Shaka! When the walls fell! Shaka of Utomi! Makova. His army at Utomi! Utomi aflame! Utomi in ruins!"

The Tamarian diplomats stormed out and the guards moved in. Borges called the Krishna and requested an immediate beam-out. Once they rematerialized on its transporter pad, Geordi said, "Please tell me that wasn't a declaration of war."

"Not exactly," Borges said. "But it will become one if we don't fix this right away." She looked down at Data's motionless form. "And the only one who can fix it has just gone crazy."

"It's bad," Geordi reported later as he, Deanna, and Borges stood together in the Krishna's engineering lab, where Data lay motionless on a diagnostic slab. "I tried tuning him back to normal again, but it's not taking. All this going back and forth between different mental states has...well, it's unmoored him. His neural pathways can no longer remember which state they're supposed to be in." He shook his head. "We should've known this would happen. Forcing him to s.h.i.+ft around the way he perceives people, time, his own sense of self...he can't figure out how to interpret reality anymore."

"So you're saying he's schizophrenic," Deanna interpreted.

"Something like that. But more basic. His brain doesn't seem to be processing anything normally at the moment. Even simple things like his spatial awareness have gotten erratic. We had to disconnect his motor functions below the neck to keep him from slamming into the walls-or into us." But Data's face was still capable of expression. He looked lost, confused, verging on panic. Geordi studied him sadly. "I can't imagine what he must be going through in there. Maybe it's something like when I first got my VISOR, before I learned to interpret the input-but that was just one of my senses, and at least the way I thought was the same. I knew who I was, what I was. From what I can tell, Data's sense of even such a basic thing could be changing from moment to moment."

"Is there anything you can do to fix it?" Deanna asked. "Can you shut him down and purge the program, like when the Iconian virus infected him?"

Geordi shook his head. "It wouldn't work here. The modifications to his emotion chip aren't just a program-they change the way his neural circuits interact on a basic level. We still don't have a very good understanding of how Doctor Soong's chip even works."

He put a hand on her shoulder. "I promise you, Deanna, I won't rest until I fix this. Even if I have to rewire every positronic pathway by hand. But it could be a long time."

"Time we don't have," Borges told him. "We have to fix this before the Tamarians start shooting."

He is lost.

That thought comes to him in those moments when he is able to formulate it, before it drifts away again to be replaced by...He does not know what. But sometimes he does. Flashes of familiarity. A jumble of shapes and colors is briefly recognizable as a face, then is meaningless again. It does not change; he does. He loses face but remembers sound, hears: "Data, can you understand me? Do you know who I am?" For a moment, he knows. Troi. Troy. Destroy. Was this the face that launched a thousand s.h.i.+ps, And burnt the topless towers of Ilium? He is lost in the city, fires burning, a great quadrupedal animal looming overhead, but he cannot remember its name. He is Shaka, his mighty walls falling around him, his great ambition to protect his city forevermore proving his greatest failure, for the army is too weakened from building the wall to defend the city within. He hears the sound of the trumpet, and shouts with a great shout, that the wall of Jericho falls down flat. A trombone blows, rising as a bearded figure in red and black moves its slide. Red light flashes, a sliding, rising tone sounding danger, danger, as consoles explode around him and a vast blue-green orb looms larger before him...Oh, sh-p> And burnt the topless towers of Ilium? He is lost in the city, fires burning, a great quadrupedal animal looming overhead, but he cannot remember its name. He is Shaka, his mighty walls falling around him, his great ambition to protect his city forevermore proving his greatest failure, for the army is too weakened from building the wall to defend the city within. He hears the sound of the trumpet, and shouts with a great shout, that the wall of Jericho falls down flat. A trombone blows, rising as a bearded figure in red and black moves its slide. Red light flashes, a sliding, rising tone sounding danger, danger, as consoles explode around him and a vast blue-green orb looms larger before him...Oh, sh-p> It is gone. He does not even remember it was there. For a time, he is not even aware there is a he to be aware. Ten thousand years of history on ten thousand planets unfold within him. He is it, is of it, without knowing himself, and yet it is there...until it is gone and never was. He remembers there is a universe, senses it, but is not aware of himself as distinct from it. His awareness focuses on a room. He is the room. A body-goldwhite in goldblack-lies in the center. Worried shapes/figures/friends (blueblack, goldblack, glint of metal) hover above him. He is the worriers. "His cognitive destabilization is accelerating," he says. "Isn't there anything we can do?" his other self responds. He shakes his head, metal glinting. He has no eyes. What are eyes? Black eyes, wide and deep, gazing down at himself. "Data," he calls to himself. "I need you to focus. Focus on the sound of my voice. Follow it."

He focuses on the sound but loses the words. It is only sound now. He is not inside it any longer, sees the face it comes from. Black eyes, wide and deep. Deep black void. Black, slick, roiling, it strikes out and Tasha dies. Agony! Pain, as he never knew it before, did not know it then. Then? It is now. There is only now. Or there was. Now, she lies broken on the sand, a cruel black stain on her face. Now, she lies beside him in the bed, laughing, eyes wide in discovery. Now, Ard'rian kisses him and he does not know/finally knows why. He fires the phaser at the aqueduct. He fires the disruptor at Fajo. He knows hate for the first time. Crosis shows him. The Borg...a.s.similation...He dissolves into the ma.s.s, only this time he is not becoming, he is losing himself, and he fears. Help me, some part of him pleads, though the rest of him does not understand it. Talk to me. Somebody. Give me a voice to follow.

The voice comes again, but from another place. "Maybe the key is to stop looking so hard for external causes and solutions...learn to manage your own emotional state.

"If the problem is with your own self-image, then the crucial thing is to make peace with it. If you do that, then nothing from outside can threaten your sense of self.

"Just try to be the best Data you can be."

Data. I am Data. He caught that concept, held on to it. "Dwelling on external causes for our emotional states can keep us from exercising our own ability to manage them." Outside was chaos-erratic, unstable. Nothing stayed the same. All he had was himself. I am Data! Remember that! It started to drift, but he clung to it. He stopped casting about for input and turned his attention inward. He shut out all the noise, looking deeper, until he found something that was stable, something that endured. Data. Who he was, in purest form, independent of anything else. Who he had always been. Who he would always be, no matter what was changed in him.

And it was whole. It was enough.

Liberated, he surrendered himself to it.

"Oh, no."

Geordi's anxiety spiked through Deanna's mind like a phaser hit. "What's wrong?"

"He's shutting down! No, no, no, don't do this to me, Data! Don't you do this, dammit!" He worked desperately at Data's peeled-open skull, trying to get a response from the positronic net within. But its status lights had stopped blinking, and nothing he did made any difference.

Finally he slumped and lay down his tools, his defeat a heavy weight upon her. She asked, "Is he..."

"He's in...I guess you'd call it a deep coma. There's power, there's a baseline of activity, but there's no response to stimuli. And I can't do anything to change it."

The more accurate term would be a vegetative state, she knew. But that hardly mattered. "Is there any hope?"

He shook his head wearily. "I don't know, Deanna. There's something still going on in there, but just barely. If he were human, there'd be a chance he could wake up from the coma on his own. It happens, right?" She nodded. "But with him, there's no precedent. I just don't know."

They sat silently for some moments. Finally she could be silent no more. "Geordi? Would you like to tell me what's making you feel so guilty?"

He winced. "I know you'll tell me it's not my fault. But...I can't get over the fact that we were fighting. We'd patched things up enough to work together, but I was still sore at him, and he knew it, and..." He ran a hand over his head. "What if I didn't watch him closely enough? What if being mad at him meant I didn't do enough to make sure he'd be safe?"

"I will tell you it wasn't your fault. You wouldn't let that happen. But I'll also tell you it's natural for you to wonder that at a time like this. Try to keep that in mind, to recognize that those thoughts are part of the process. If you can step back from them, you can cope with them more effectively."

"Or you could look behind you."

They whirled. Data lay there looking up at them, an impish smile on his face. "And while you are at it, could someone tell me why I am unable to reactivate my motor functions?"

Geordi was beaming. "Data! You're all right!"

"Mentally, yes. But about those motor functions-"

"Of course, I'll get right on it."

They pulled him to a sitting position and Geordi went to work at the back of his neck. "Data, are you yourself again?" Deanna asked.

"Hm. In the sense that my cognitive processes and emotion chip are now restored to baseline mode, the answer is yes. However...the definition of 'myself' is still undergoing reappraisal, I think. I am still...gathering Data." He smiled, and she raised him a laugh.

"So what happened?" Geordi asked. "How did you...reset yourself?"

He answered, but to Deanna. "I have you to thank for that, Counselor. I recalled the advice you gave me about using peace with myself as a foundation for relating peacefully with those around me. My perceptual input was chaotic, so I focused my awareness inward to my baseline cognitive parameters. I was able to use that substrate as a reference point for rebuilding my perceptual model."

Suddenly his body shuddered into mobility again. After briefly testing his range of motion, Data rose. "I seem to recall physically a.s.saulting the Tamarian amba.s.sador. Is this correct?"

"I'm afraid so," she replied.

"Then we must hurry if we are to defuse the situation."

"Data," Geordi said, "I'm not willing to risk retuning you to Tamarian mode again."

"I do not believe that will be necessary, Geordi. I know what to do."

It was an impressive performance. Even while in standard cognitive mode, Data was able to adapt himself to communicate in Tamarian terms-and his strategy showed he had little trouble thinking in their terms either. He reminded them of the myth of Palwin of the Fields, a well-intentioned but naive monarch who had affronted the G.o.ds with his hubris and been stricken by madness. He had inflicted horrors on his people until he was deposed, blinded, and cast out into the fields to wander as a beggar. But without his sight to blind him and his power to fetter him, his madness had brought him sacred insight. His wisdom and humility had inspired his people, and the new faith that arose around his Delphic proclamations had tempered the harshness of the regime that had deposed him, eventually winning the new king to the cause of peace.

Through his presentation, Data redefined his actions to the Tamarians as a reenactment of this myth. Rather than an affront against the proper ritual patterns of the universe, they had simply been the intervention of a different ritual. And since that ritual/ myth involved madness, it was only natural that it had intruded when least expected. Like many cultures steeped in myth and mysticism, the Tamarians had great respect for madness, seeing it as a source of divine wisdom. In their view, it would be most unwise not to heed the message that Palwin had unexpectedly sent them through the person of Data. And that message was one of peace.

Moreover, once they understood the experiment and its consequences, they gained a new respect for Data. His willingness to risk himself in the name of communication evoked-and honored-the memory of Dathon's sacrifice at El-Adrel. The parallel even helped the Tamarians identify with the Federation, in the same way that they identified with their ancestors and archetypes through metaphoric parallels. Rather than bringing war, Data's actions had supplied an even stronger foundation for peace.

"And all it took was finding the right metaphor to define it with," Borges told the others once they reconvened in the briefing room. "It's a testament to the power that symbolism has. It can change the way we perceive the world-even without a special chip to retune our brains."

"I am glad you feel that way, Doctor," Data told her. "Because in the wake of recent events, I think it would be unwise to continue the experiment with my emotion chip."

"Now, don't be so quick to say that, Data," she cautioned. "You did find a way to recover your balance all on your own, without any outside intervention. That strongly suggests you'd be able to do it again. And it would be a valuable a.s.set to the Federation. There are other species besides the Tamarians whose alien modes of thought make communication difficult."

"I acknowledge the value of your work, Doctor Borges," he said. "I hope you can continue it. However, I must decline to partic.i.p.ate any further." He took in Deanna with his gaze. "For some time, I have believed that my emotion chip would make me more complete. Lately I have attempted to rely on it to make me a better communicator. But when I restored myself to sanity, I did so despite the influence of the chip. It was still active, but it did not hold my answers. It required the intellect and discipline I already possessed to enable me to manage it.

"I still value my emotion chip for the insights it can bring me into my friends and colleagues, and for the new experiences it allows me to explore. But I recognize now that I cannot let it define me or control me. With or without an emotion chip, I am still Data. That is what defines me. And I believe my greatest value can come not through seeking to emulate others, but through appreciating my own unique nature."

Borges glared. "You mean being an android is better than being a human or a Tamarian?"

"Only if one is an android to begin with," he said with a gentle smile. "Polonius, when Laertes departed, Doctor."

She blinked. "Remind me."

" 'This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man.' "

Suicide Note

Geoff Trowbridge