"That's heartening, but could you give me a bit more?"

"Oh ... a bit."

"Oh, G.o.d ... "

"You did ask, sir."

"Yes, I did. Go on."

"Where was I? Oh, yes. There are the mythological and religious concepts of death, which involve the soul leaving the body-"

Picard's finger shot forward. "Now, we're not going to get into defining the soul, are we? I unconditionally refuse."

Crusher looked surprised. "Well, I'm certainly not. What you'll have to do before this is over, I can't predict. Anyway, there's that concept, and there's the medical concept, which is a process. It's the difference between a door being closed and the whole building disintegrating. Medical science believes there's nothing to come back to. And there's also a veritable blur of plat.i.tudes from the religious sector, which I'll bet you don't even want to hear."

"I'd be so grateful," Picard said with a fatigued nod. "I've been trying to demythologize this from the start. I intend to stay with policy regarding the terminally ill and use that for a fulcrum."

"But these people aren't terminally ill," Riker interrupted, somehow feeling he'd have to be holding the rudder on this conversation. "For all we know, they could go on like this indefinitely."

Silently Troi nodded, not looking up. When she spoke it was with absolute conviction in those voices she heard in her mind. "That," she said, "is their biggest fear."

"Counselor," the captain addressed her, since she had drawn attention back to herself, "you say you feel a unanimous opinion. Can you guarantee you're picking up on all the feelings, all the life essences?"

Cool sweat broke out on her palms. She felt her control begin to slip. "No, I can't. The opinion is unanimous among all those who still retain a solid consciousness."

"Hold it right there," Riker said. "That qualification bothers me."

Troi shot him a glare. "Yes, it's true that I'm perceiving ma.s.sive insanity among the minds who've lost control of their personhood. That is also what the others are afraid of. Do you blame them? They've made a decision for themselves and the others who aren't able."

"What do you mean by 'aren't able'?"

Troi took a deep, cold breath between clenched teeth and forced herself to be clinical, no matter her tattered emotions. "I would cla.s.sify it as dementia praec.o.x."

"What's that?"

She gave him an intolerant look and said, "Dementia is irreversible deterioration of mental faculties with correspondent degenerative emotional instability. Praec.o.x is simply prematurity."

"Which brings up the question of next of kin."

Troi gripped the arm of her chair and continued glaring at Riker. "Don't you think they're better able to judge their companions' wishes than we are?"

Riker had to nod a reluctant agreement. "I suppose if you and I had been sharing eternity, we would qualify as each others' next of kin."

He suddenly found himself held tight in Picard's gaze. He hadn't meant to say anything profound, yet they were sharing eternity. The two of them, perhaps more than any other pair on this ship, were most likely to make that decision for each other, that life or death choice. As first officer, Riker's first responsibility was Jean-Luc Picard's well-being. As captain, Picard's most valuable and needed commodity was his right-hand man. Together they had to be guardian angel for each other and the whole ship. They were-or should ideally be-each other's family ... next of kin. Ironic that on a ship full of families, the bridge had somehow gotten itself stocked with people who had nothing, no one, but each other.

"And the others are like accident victims," Picard said to him as they shared the moment. "Completely dependent upon a machine for sustenance."

"Yes," Dr. Crusher agreed. "They're mentally competent and nonterminal, but they want to die. Modern medical history since the twentieth century has had to deal with that, and it hasn't gotten any easier. Medicine took a tremendous leap forward during that period and has improved exponentially since then. The only constant is the idea that each euthanasia case has its own variables and should be considered individually. Then there's the problem of active versus pa.s.sive euthanasia. Do you cut off intravenous feeding, or do you just let it run out, and what's the difference, and what are the moral implications of each-"

"You're piling up questions," the captain observed. "I asked you for answers."

"There aren't any," she said broadly. "That's the problem. We regard it as inhumane to let animals suffer, but we've always had difficulty applying that to our own species."

"But historically," Riker said, "isn't it true that this whole problem has been one of deciding whether an organic body without a mind is still alive? What we have here is the other way around. Minds ... no bodies."

Crusher cast him a glance. "No, you're wrong. There's nothing new about minds without bodies."

When Deanna Troi spoke up, though her voice was weak, all turned to listen to her. But this time she didn't speak of the ent.i.ties who pressed upon her, but of the question they were actually wrestling with. "That's how physically crippled people see themselves. Minds without bodies. At least for a while. It's often not true at all and they often change their opinions about themselves with time and therapy."

For a few seconds, n.o.body said anything because they expected her to keep going. When she didn't, Dr. Crusher shifted uneasily, turned back to Riker, and added, "But there've also been plenty of cases of conscious, rational people wanting to decide for themselves, and not changing their minds, Mr. Riker. Some people don't want to live if they can't function independently. Some can commit suicide, which is its own problem, but for those who can't, the problem takes on the special complication of bringing in another person."

"Who also have rights," Riker argued. "The right not to commit murder, for one."

With an impatient huff, Picard gripped the edge of his desk. "Yes. We do have the right to consider our own consciences. Is there a definitive answer, doctor? Even one of general policy from the Federation Medical Standards Council? Or do you have a ruling that we could consider ship's policy?"

"Me?" She shook her head and blinked. "This is one subject I nearly failed at medical school. I never found a single case that fit into the grooves of any other case. There's just no grounds for comparison."

"And Federation policy? Doctor, I need a precedent and I need it now."

She paused, thought about it, her mouth twisting with contemplation, then shrugged. "A line was finally drawn, clinically speaking, between animals with memories and animals with memories who were also able to imagine a personal future and have desires for that future. Even that had its faults. Babies, for instance. They simply don't care about the future."

Now it was Picard's turn to sigh. He pressed his mouth into a line and groaned, "Beverly, you're making me tired."

She appeared sympathetic, but admitted, "There's just no streamlining this issue. Which is why there hasn't been any law pa.s.sed regarding it. Some things should simply never be legislated."

Riker straightened his back and folded his arms tighter. "Leaving us on our own."

"Consider it a privilege," she shot back at him.

"But these people, these 'souls,' if we have to use that term," Riker continued, "are not dying. They could go on forever like this!"

"Yes"- the doctor nodded, not very patiently-"the real question is not one of someone who is dying choosing when the end should be and we as society forcing him to live until the last moment, but rather ... what is it that makes life worth living?" For this, a thick and weighted question, she turned directly to Picard, and held out an empty hand to him as though expecting him to fill it.

The captain stared back at her, entranced neither by this woman's beauty nor by his own feelings toward her, but by this question she asked of him, this question that was poised on the threshold between life and death.

What makes life worth living?

Beside Crusher, Troi stirred. "A person who is dying does ask if his disease has taken away everything that makes life worth living, as you say. There will be no more moments that resemble life as he has known it. When pain takes away any enjoyment of sight, scent, sounds, touch-"

"But we're not discussing pain, Counselor," the captain snapped, his voice growing rough. "These ent.i.ties have communicated no pain whatsoever of a physical nature, is that not correct? If not, you'd better tell me now, because this is a d.a.m.ned precipice we're walking over here."

"I wish they had," Crusher said dryly. "The question would've been simpler. My realm of the physical is much simpler to manage than Deanna's realm of mental anguish and confusion." She turned to the counselor and said, "I don't envy you."

The captain got up and paced around the desk. "Doctor, I had hoped you'd be more help than this."

Beverly Crusher shifted her gaze for a moment, settled back, crossed her long straight legs, and looked up at him again. "I can be more help," she told him. "But you have to ask for my personal opinion."

"Oh, d.a.m.n it. Of course. I'm sorry." He reached a requesting palm toward her. "Please."

She sighed and thought about it. "They've expressed a well thought-out, reasonable desire to die."

"And?"

"And I think that should be respected."

"Does that mean acted upon? Come on, doctor, don't make me grill you."

"You mean, would I do it? Captain, let me put it this way. I've found that suffering can be mental and that it does no one any good."

"Would you," he repeated, "do it?"

She straightened her shoulders. "Yes."

Data found his way through the barely lit starship with an android's faultless sense of direction. Ordinarily he'd have thought nothing of that ability, but today it had a stubborn presence in his mind. He was aware of himself today, where usually he was not, at least not when he was alone. But today each pink wedge of utility light along the floor as he pa.s.sed it was a tiny reminder of his doubts. Each doubt needled his thoughts and made the process inaccurate, irritating. He wondered what thinking was like for humans. To think one thought at a time, some without figures, without context ... it seemed almost dysfunctional. But humans often perceived things that he missed entirely until they were pointed out to him.

I seem to be on a cross pattern away from humanity rather than toward it. What they see as simple seems difficult and incongruous to me. What I can compute and perceive without effort, they consider arduous. As time goes by I catalog more and more information, yet I move further and further from humanness because of it. The more time I spend among them, the more complicated they appear to me. Perhaps now these conditions will change. Perhaps this is what they mean by destiny.

He felt his body come to a halt and readjusted his pilot mode, letting himself slide instantly out of autolocate, and indeed found himself right where he wanted to be. The hangar deck. He stood before the door, staring through the dimness at the lettering.

SHUTTLECRAFT HANGAR DECK.

AUTHORIZED ENTRY ONLY.

A.C.E. CLEARANCE REQUIRED.

INQUIRE DECK 14.

OR CONTACT SECOND OFFICER.

He lost track of those few seconds during which he studied those letters and their significance. All his internal alarms were ringing, telling him to track down the a.s.sistant chief engineer, but there was no time. And that would give him away. Of course, being the second officer got him off the hook fairly well too, even if his internal alarms couldn't be programmed to know that. Information like that was rational, a matter of thought. The formalized ranking of human beings, of lifeforms of any kind, was difficult for machine thinking to absorb, and had to be handled by what Geordi liked to call Data's subdominant hemisphere-the part of his brain that was organic, the part of his personality that let him be subjective. The part of him that Geordi insisted was no machine.

Data looked down at his left hand. He opened the fist and saw the glint of gold and brush-buffed platinum in the stylized A-shape that he himself had earned the privilege of wearing. Yet this was not his. His own was still riding safely on his chest, proclaiming the honor of his past and the degree to which humanity had opened its arms to him. He could never look at his Starfleet insignia and think of humanity as inferior to any other species; few species would accept such as him. He had known the shunning glances of prejudice before. Geordi would chide him for not realizing that significance until now, that prejudice was in itself a kind of privilege lifeforms kept among themselves.

The gold turned rosy-pink under the utility lights above the door. He felt a strange, unexpected pang in his chest as his synthetic heart pounded in reaction to the high-gear racing of his nervous system.

This insignia, this one in his palm-this was Geordi's.

Forgive me. I know I have never done anything resembling this to you before. I would have warned you, had I expected to behave this way....

Illogical. Geordi wasn't here. Geordi was locked in the antimatter reserve center.

Data clutched his left hand tightly around the insignia. Also illogical. He should put it down, leave it behind. There was no purpose to carrying it. But rather than leaving the insignia behind, he dismissed the thought and kept his fist tight. With the other hand he quickly tapped in his authorized-entry code and the thick tunnel-shaped doors parted for him.

The hangar deck stored a few regulation shuttlecraft and several smaller, faster ships of various styles, all hidden neatly away in their stalls, ready to be elevated to the hangar bay, one deck up, when they were called for.

Very human impatience gnawed at him. He knew very well what impatience was. But there was no alternative to the time he must spend here before he could embark on his mission.

His hand twitched. Fail-safe programming sent quavers through his biomechanical nervous system, telling him that what he was doing he must not do.

As easily as ignoring a nagging ache, he rerouted his awareness away from the internal warnings and looked around for the mechanical stock he would need-yes, there it was. He had been concerned that in the midst of a crisis, supply engineering hadn't managed to deliver these small stock crates in time, but here they sat, stacked neatly before him. He gazed at them in the same manner as he had gazed at the letters on the door. On top of the stack was an authorization chip that simply said: Request of Lt. Commander Data. Esn. F. Palmer-okay.

Time was limited. Yet he was hesitating. Never before had he found himself literally at odds with himself, literally battling his own body to make it do what his programming-his ... conscience-had always considered wrong. Deception. Disobedience. It was not in his progr-in his nature.

His left hand twitched and opened. Geordi's insignia clattered to the deck with a metallic ting. Data looked down at it.

Impa.s.sively he stooped and picked it up. If he took it with him, the starship's mainframe would pick up on it and use it as a locator beacon, and would tell the bridge that Geordi was with him. Such a consequence ... he would leave the insignia behind.

He would leave it.

He paced toward the exit and went to the nearest computer panel, still looking at the insignia in his hand.

"I will leave it," he insisted. His voice in the empty hangar deck was a loud sound. Why did this insignia whisper to him?

He put it down quickly. So quickly that it spun on its pin and ended up sideways. He paused.

Almost as quickly, he pulled off his own insignia. It too was gold, platinum-identical to the other. Except that this was his, what he had earned, and that was Geordi's. Each was encoded with the biopulse of the owner, including ident.i.ty, and microsensors, and miniature communicator-Starfleet jargon called these insignia the "minimiracles" of recent science.

But today it was the shape and not the science that intrigued Data. Today his attention was held by the modern-day heraldry of the Starfleet emblem and what it meant to such as him.

His powerful heart pumped harder, a heavy muscular action, like the great machine that it was. He heard it thud clearly through his body, and felt the strain upon his systems as each struggled to push its own interests through his biomechanical nervous system, unsure which of the impulses to follow.

With a gesture of finality, he placed his own insignia on the panel beside Geordi's and turned away, leaving them there together.

When he knelt beside the crates the engineers had left here on his order, his body began to settle down as it recognized a task at hand. As the pumping of his heart subsided to its usual cadence, Data began opening the crates of specialized parts and mnemonic encoders and set about constructing a makeshift cloaking device small enough for a shuttlecraft.

"Now wait a minute!" Riker slid off the desk and fanned his hands before Troi. "We can't just interfere!"

"We must," Troi said, loudly this time. She felt the color rise in her cheeks and anger take over her heart. How dare he stand in her way!

"Now look," Picard angrily reminded, "I called this meeting for a clear reason and it's getting muddled. If I'm going to be forced into making a decision, I intend to have all the precedents behind me. Let's streamline this, and that's an order."

Before Riker had the chance to respond, Troi leaned toward Picard, the first time she had changed position since all this started. "Captain, humans are interventionists by nature. Since ancient times, and even before that, we've intervened in the course of evolution by selective marriage, all the way back to tribal beginnings when the chief got his choice of the fairest, youngest, strongest maidens, and they had children who grew up to be the decision makers for the whole tribe. It is our heritage!"

"That's nonsense," Riker accused.

"Not necessarily." Crusher pressed on. Her tone had a defensive sting and she turned a cold shoulder to him and spoke to the captain instead. "When we cured pneumonia and TB, we altered evolution forever. Countless millions who were weak and meant to die simply didn't anymore. When gla.s.ses were invented, all the millions of nearsighted people who would've been functionally blind in an earlier century suddenly were completely normal. They not only lived, but prospered, mated, had more nearsighted children. Mankind's been circ.u.mventing natural selection for so long that it's become immoral not to. There's your precedent, Captain. I don't believe the question is whether or not to interfere."

"What about science?" Riker interrupted, circling the desk to the captain's side. "Could technology eventually put these captive ent.i.ties into bodies? Like Data's?"

Picard glared at him for a moment, then pivoted to Crusher. "Doctor, what about that?"

She shifted from one elbow to the other and dubiously said, "I'll just wave my magic wand.... In my opinion, it might be too late for them. If they've been in a virtual fugue state since 1995 and most even before that, they may have lost their ability to be embodied in humanoid form."

"You mean like a blind man suddenly getting complete sight?" Picard suggested. "Something like that?"

"I mean exactly that. There are plenty of circ.u.mstances that allow current medicine to replace or restore sight, but unless the patient is very young, there are usually grave complications. If I suddenly restored Geordi's sight with some kind of transplant or something, he'd have to completely retrain his senses. His whole body, his whole brain. His sense of visual depth would be all askew, for one. He'd be grabbing for things that were ten feet away, because he wouldn't be able to tell the difference. He probably couldn't walk with his eyes open either. Not without extensive therapy. His equilibrium would be completely thrown off. His balance would suddenly be affected by something that had never affected it before. There've been too many disastrous cases of restored sight. Some patients ultimately opted to have blindness reinflicted rather than continue with sight."

"My G.o.d ... seriously?"