He had sensed a little anxiousness in her voice as they exchanged pleasantries, though she seemed well in command of the situation-and in command of Sawliru. It was obvious to Picard that the outcome of this conference was important to her.

The captain had personally escorted each party to the conference room and, before beginning the talks, had checked with Worf, who had done an un.o.btrusive tricorder scan on each of them. He was not surprised to learn that each member had concealed a personal weapon of some sort about them. He wasn't troubled by the fact; he had dealt with negotiations between well-armed hostile parties before, and was confident in his ability to handle any situation that might arise. He did, however, have Worf post a pair of security guards in the corridor outside.

He smiled warmly, his best conference smile, and began.

"Ladies and gentlemen, welcome aboard the Enterprise. I hope we can find a resolution here-"

"You can start," interrupted Alkirg coldly, "by having those ... things stand in our presence."

Jared laughed-a harsh, unpleasant sound. "That will be the day," he said.

The combatants were off to a fast start, Picard sighed to himself.

"Both parties are present as equals aboard this ship," Picard calmly explained. "I don't know the customs of your homeworld, but here the matter of protocol exists at my whim. Everyone will remain seated for the duration of the conference."

"Very well, Captain," Sawliru said, halting a hot reply from Alkirg with a sharp glance. "We are ready to begin." There were curt, answering nods from the androids.

"Very well. Force Commander Sawliru, if you would be so kind as to repeat what you told me earlier about your mission."

"Certainly, Captain," the thin, hawk-faced man said. He took a deep breath, and began speaking. "I was ordered by the Vemlan Council to seek out and capture a group of androids accused, among other crimes, of disobeying orders and stealing the freighter ship Conquest. I was placed in command of a fleet of eight vessels and ordered to proceed along the Conquest's trajectory.

"We tracked the ship to the Hevaride system, where we detected traces of its pa.s.sage. In a surprise and unprovoked attack, the Conquest appeared from within an asteroid node and completely destroyed the Vemlan navy ship Avenger. She also traded shots with the Nemesis and the Vindicator. Several of my crew were killed. We lost track of her after that, and only found traces of her again after the probability storm."

Kurta shifted restlessly and caught Jared's eye. The android captain didn't move a muscle, Picard noted, but his wife's expression spoke volumes. She looked as if she'd been caught with her hand in the cookie jar-interesting. Then he could a.s.sume that at least part of the Force Commander's story was true.

"What orders are the crew of the ship in question accused of disobeying?" he asked.

"The list is too long to repeat completely here, Captain," the Force Commander said, calmly. "I think that the most pertinent one would be the act of leading a genocidal war against all human life on Vemla."

Jared was on his feet at once, fury in his eyes, his index finger stabbing accusingly at the military man.

"Sawliru," he said quietly but strongly, "you are as good a liar as ever."

"Calm yourself, Jared," the Force Commander said, seemingly unaffected by the display. "We are simply talking here. And I, for one, think it's time that we revealed our little secret, don't you?"

Jared remained stubbornly on his feet. "You walk in here after slaying hundreds of thousands of my people and dare accuse me of leading a war of genocide? Your hypocrisy astounds me!" he said, his head lifted proudly.

"Facts are facts, Jared," the Force Commander said, menacingly. "You should know them better than I. You killed millions in an attempt to wipe your creators out. We are not here to discuss my alleged moral shortcomings, we are here to discuss your surrender." Sawliru's low, even monotone sent a chill up Picard's back.

"Jared, you will sit," Picard commanded in a low but firm voice. Jared waited for a few moments, staring deeply at his antagonist, before he retook his chair. His eyes never left the Force Commander's.

Once the android was seated, Picard took a deep breath, and began to address the Force Commander's words.

"Are you serious in this accusation, Force Commander?"

The smaller man took a rectangle of plastic from his belt. "If your computers can display this image, I think it will bear me out."

Picard nodded, and took the square. He placed it on the scanning console in front of him. A large screen at the end of the room lit up, as the computer deciphered the alien information and converted it into something a little more digestible to its subsidiary systems.

The Force Commander rose with a respectful nod to Picard, and walked over to the display. He looked at it for a few moments, as if seeing it for the first time and viewing it as art.

The picture was unmistakably that of Jared, his face twisted in a grimace of pure rage. He was wearing a brown coverall that was ripped and burnt in places. A wide bloodstain covered his chest, almost a parody of the sash of command he wore. In his hands was an evil-looking black weapon from which smoke and flames spewed forth. It was a perfect picture, almost as if he had posed for it. The expression could not have been affected; such raw ferocity, Picard felt, can only come from the bowels of the soul.

The Force Commander turned to the rest of the a.s.sembled after he had let the feeling of the image sink in. "This is a view of Alpha Cla.s.s Android Jared, taken at the ma.s.sacre on the steps of the Great a.s.sembly building, two months after his escape from the gaming arena. Over seven hundred unarmed civilians were killed in a lightning raid by twenty-four rogue androids, led by this same unit." He turned to the captain. "This is what you have let aboard your vessel, Captain Picard. A death machine."

Jared's eyes never left the Force Commander, and it was only Kurta's hand on his arm that restrained him from doing immediate violence.

"Do you deny this?" the military leader asked, almost pleasantly. Picard could detect a trace of enjoyment in his voice, something that went beyond pure devotion to duty. Did the Force Commander have a personal vendetta, he wondered?

"I deny nothing," Jared said, harshly. "But aren't you telling only one side of the story, Sawliru?"

"There is only one story to tell. I will leave the full story of the war to be told by Mission Commander Alkirg," he said, indicating his a.s.sociate and nominal superior.

The woman bowed her head in acknowledgment, and turned to the Starfleet officers, purposefully placing the androids outside of her field of vision.

"Our people have a turbulent background, Captain," she explained. "Vemla has been plagued by wars and death and destruction. Up until three hundred years ago, we were a number of warring continental nation-states, looking threateningly down at each other over our common moats, the oceans. We spent vast sums of resources on weapons of defense and offense while many of our people went hungry and cold." Alkirg looked up at Picard, her gaze cold and unsympathetic. "We were barbarians.

"Then the Saren contacted our planet. They traded much valuable alien technology to us, as well as the knowledge that we were not alone in the universe. They sold us machines we wouldn't have had the knowledge to build for another thousand years and gave us technical information on a million different subjects. We paid dearly for the information, for we intended to use the advanced learning to create yet more sophisticated ways to kill our neighbors. It was a frightening, terrifying time.

"Then a group of scientists discovered that one of the pieces of unknown alien equipment sold to us by the Saren was an automated factory which produced positronic microprocessors."

Picard nodded. Positronic technology was the key to artificial intelligence; of all the Federation's scientists, only Dr. Noonian Soong, Data's creator, had managed to perfect it.

"We studied the processors thoroughly, however, and learned much. After thirty years of fiddling we were able to design a suitable housing for them and began the construction of the first androids.

"With the aid of that first generation of computers-machines so much faster and smarter than any we could hope to create on our own-the art of producing them was greatly enhanced. Soon they possessed tremendous strength, had endless endurance, and could be made relatively cheaply. They could even think, after a rudimentary fashion," she said, and sniffed disdainfully.

"The first androids were designed as military hardware, but the usefulness of the design had other applications. Instead of h.o.a.rding this technology, the scientists spread it among all the states of our world, and soon the production of androids began on a large scale. We soon realized that the mechanical servants we built could be used to manufacture and farm at high volumes with very little cost.

"As resources became more available, we found that there was little left to fight about. Many of our differences drifted away during that time, and we began to celebrate them, instead of fighting over them. Nations began to see each other as neighbors instead of compet.i.tors. The concepts of cla.s.s struggle, allocation of resources, and distribution of wealth faded away as people all over the world became wealthy, in material terms."

"Keep in mind that this didn't happen overnight, Captain," interrupted Force Commander Sawliru. "There was a long period of readjustment; it is difficult to unlearn what you have spent millennia learning. We came together slowly, first as a loose coalition, then as a unified political system."

"All due to the androids," remarked Picard.

"To a large extent, yes," replied Alkirg. "Androids could be used to do things no Vemlan would desire to. The boring and dangerous jobs. It was an android that went to our moons before living beings went, and androids that mined our oceans for precious minerals. Androids that cleaned our cities. Things that were impractical or impossible for living beings to do.

"As time went on, we built better androids. The first ones looked like Vemlans, but they were relatively unsophisticated. Much time and energy went into design improvement. We gave them better brains, better bodies. After a while, the androids themselves were a.s.sisting in the design of new generations.

"A hundred years ago, we had reached a plateau in our refinement. There were three main cla.s.ses of androids: Alpha units, which were used by the scientists and other learned people for help in research; Beta units, which were widely used for domestic tasks, maintenance, and entertainment; and Gamma units, which were designed for repet.i.tive tasks and dangerous work."

The woman took a breath and made a broad sweeping motion with her hands. "It was truly a Golden Age, the kind we had dreamt about, but never dared hope to live in. Our units were versatile and sophisticated. We wished for companions for our children and our elderly and a means to distinguish between androids, to personalize them. We found early on that using the same face and body for many androids was maddening when it came to finding a particular one, so we programmed a random function into our construction computers. Every unit that came out of the factory had its own face and size and shape. We made them male and female for aesthetic reasons, and added programming to give them simulated emotions, also in random patterns. Each unit had a distinct personality so that it could interact with Vemlans on a day-to-day basis without seeming machinelike."

"You created a race of slaves," growled Jared.

"We built machines," corrected Alkirg emphatically. "Machines like this ship, that computer, a ground-effect vehicle, an artificial satellite, a mechanical dishwasher. Machines, not people."

"You gave us emotions," countered Kurta. "You built us in your own image."

"We programmed the illusion of emotions. You have no true feelings. Captain, may I continue, or must I be interrupted after every sentence?"

"Please continue. Kurta, you may direct questions after the mission commander is finished. You will have time enough to tell your own story."

Kurta sat back, evidently displeased. Alkirg gave her an evil look of satisfaction, then continued.

"Things were almost perfect until about twenty years ago. We had sent a few scout ships into deep s.p.a.ce and had been visited several times by the Saren. We were hoping for contact with other races, as well. We had fully intended on colonizing the nearby inhabitable planets when the wars came along.

"No one knows exactly what happened. There are theories about a malfunctioning algorithm included in the new models' programming, but nothing has been proven. Whatever the cause, there was an irrational wave of unrest among the Alpha units. It started slowly, as such things do, with murmurs of protest about work and lack of opportunity. Within a year it had spread to the Betas. Before long, there was outright rebellion. The wars started when a suicidal group of malfunctioning androids took over a mechanic's shop and refused to submit to reprogramming. They killed everyone in the shop and began an all-out war to exterminate all life on Vemla. They sabotaged other units to fight as well. We were in the midst of an uprising. It was the first war Vemla had seen in two hundred years.

"That," she glared at Jared, "was one of the units that led the first revolt. There were others, but Alpha Unit Jared was the prime motivator, the unit responsible for all the others. It diabolically organized the other malfunctioning units into terrorist groups. They were ruthless. They attacked installations all over the planet, using bombings, a.s.sa.s.sinations, and mechanical death-squads to eliminate their obstacles in a neat, clean, machinelike manner. Nor did they spare unarmed civilians in their quest for supremacy. They killed all who got in their way."

Picard watched the reactions of those seated around the table closely. Sawliru maintained a deeply satisfied expression, as if he were happy that this story was, at last, being told. Kurta watched the Vemlan stateswoman with open disgust and clenched hands. Jared merely glared starkly at the two who had dared to oppose him. Perhaps Number One had been correct; from the story the two organics told, perhaps it was not safe to trust the androids.

Suddenly, Picard feared for the safety of the repair crew, still trying to fix the Freedom's collapsing drives, on a ship full of killers. It was not a pleasant thought, and he needed to do something about it.

"The war was horrible," Alkirg continued, "and it escalated rapidly. As soon as we destroyed one terrorist stronghold in the wilderness, a retaliatory strike was made against the Vemlans in urban areas, without regard to who was killed. In all our years of warfare, nothing we had done could compare to the atrocities that the rogue units committed. We fought back, of course, in self-defense. We used our advantages. We cut off their supply lines and reinforcements and halted the manufacture of androids. We destroyed the units we found defective. It was only when the public learned of the rogue unit's policy of genocide, that they wanted our world for themselves, without any real people around, that we began destroying all the units, malfunctioning or not. They were just too dangerous."

"That was when the terrorist units began using weapons of ma.s.s destruction," Sawliru continued. "Poisons and nerve gases, radioactive dust, bio-warfare agents, special androids that went into berserk killing rages or carried explosives into populated areas, even nuclear weapons. All the horrors that we had created and forgotten about were used against us. They wiped out the city of Gemlouv, over two million people, with a thermonuclear device, and killed another million and a half in the suburb of Trengard with poison gases. We were planning a full-scale push to wipe out the last pocket of rogues when a terrorist Alpha unit called Dren introduced a bioagent into the life-support systems of the orbiting satellite stations, killing every Vemlan on board. The remainder of the rogues stole a shuttle and met with Dren and other androids at our research station. That's when they stole the Conquest." He leaned back in his chair, satisfied with his report. "From there, you know the story, Captain."

There was stunned silence. Picard was attempting to evaluate the accuracy of the story on his own. He tried not to look nervous at the thought of an explosive-carrying android, when he realized that this would be a perfect opportunity for the androids to get rid of their enemies, once and for all. Failing that, he glanced at Deanna to try to gauge her reaction. But her face was blank-which meant, most likely, that she had thoughts which she did not care to discuss in front of the visitors.

Picard paused to consider the matter; he had been strongly affected by Alkirg's tale, and he knew it. But he also knew every story had two sides. He turned to the opposite side of the table. "Jared, I trust you have a response?"

The android leader got slowly to his feet, his anger gone or channeled, and walked over to the image that was still displayed across the far wall.

"It is a poor likeness," he said quietly. "Your security cameras never did work properly."

He stared again at the incriminating image. "Let me tell you a story, Captain.

"I was designed to become a lab a.s.sistant, or draftsman, or some other highly skilled position. I had a cla.s.s A rating, the highest there was. Had I been sent to some chemical lab or to some research station, the entire rebellion would never have come about. But I wasn't.

"I was a.s.signed to an old man, a scholar, as an aide and companion. His name was Tenek, and he taught history at the Military University in the capital city. He was an old soldier, retired from the Vemlan planetary army to an easy position instructing the young people of the city in the history of the wars we had avoided for so long. He could have asked for a Beta, as most of his a.s.sociates did, but there was a certain amount of prestige in having an Alpha as a domestic servant.

"Tenek was a kind master who enjoyed talking with me until all hours of the night. Not many would willingly listen to the bemused rambling of an old man; he would rattle off his experiences and the glorious achievements in the misguided past and I would listen, fascinated. He instructed me as he did any of his students, only I absorbed all he said and lost none of it. I read the books he had, all of them. Tenek didn't mind; as long as his meals were on time, the house was clean, and I was available to listen to whatever he had to say, I pretty much had the run of the house.

"For a long time I reveled in the joy of knowledge for its own sake. I was so struck by curiosity that I persuaded him to bring more books home to complete my education. I think he was secretly pleased that I, an android, wanted to learn what he had to teach when so many of his students seemed apathetic.

"Then one day, when an a.s.sociate of my ... employer's own android was in the shop, he loaned me to him. My master's friend was an ugly little man, and he made himself feel better by degrading the androids around him. It was a safe outlet for the hostility he felt. I was pressed into service doing all matter of degrading and demeaning tasks as he sat by idly and punished me for nonexistent shortcomings. I wanted to leave and run back to my kind master, but, of course, I couldn't. As the abuse became greater, I began to wonder what drove the little man to do these things, and the meaning of the words struck me.

"All the poetry, art, music, philosophy, and history that I had learned told me that the greatest feeling in the universe, the one for which we all strive, is the one that was forever denied me. Freedom. Upon my return, I discussed my revelation with my ma.s.s-with Tenek, and he agreed that it was evil that one Vemlan should own another. But he was startled by the thought that it was equally evil that a Vemlan should own an android. He insisted that my postulate was flawed because I was 'merely a machine, however sophisticated.' I was not alive." Jared enunciated harshly, turning toward his rapt audience.

"I disagreed."

He walked around the table, full of confidence, his voice growing forceful. "I searched all the texts and tomes he owned, then searched the Great Library. 'What is life?' I wondered, and looked everyplace, faster than any Vemlan could, and slowly I formed a definition. Life is that which is aware of itself. Flesh or machine, it didn't matter. Life isn't a matter of chemistry, it's a matter of sentience. And I was just as sentient as any Vemlan, if not more so.

"I looked at my world, and saw the great hypocrisy in it. In great universities they talked about the supreme values of civilization and freedom, of the Golden Age of men, of the n.o.bility of the human spirit, all the while they were waited on hand and foot by a servile-no, make that a cla.s.s of slaves. They were treating their own creations worse than they had treated themselves, all the time they were talking about how n.o.ble and civilized they were. They had proclaimed their Golden Age-" at this, he stared coldly at Alkirg "-and conveniently failed to see the horrors on which it was built."

He changed the subject slightly, began speaking more gently and persuasively. "Have you noticed how fair and strong my people are, Captain? Our creators built better than they knew-with our help. In their quest for the perfect machine they recreated themselves as they dreamed to be. n.o.body wanted an ugly android. There was no need to build any but perfect specimens. We have feelings as well, courtesy of unknowable alien logic and Vemlan innovation, designed to make us more sympathetic and understanding to Vemlan wants and needs. And yes," he said, looking at Kurta, "we even have feelings for each other. As the mission commander bragged, we are all different, individual, each of us with our own faces and voices."

Again, his tone became harsh. "What normal Vemlan could stand living day after day in the presence of beings stronger, more beautiful, more intelligent, and virtually immortal without feeling some resentment? Even my kind master could be abusive sometimes, simply because he envied my perfect design. Absolute license was allowed because we were machines. We could be tortured and killed and humiliated without a second thought, and others would be built to take our place. Our value was less than nothing.

"We were gifted with intelligence greater than our creators and then denied the opportunity to use it. We were made to work in the fields or the mines or the factories endlessly until we wore out. We traveled to the satellites and to the depths of the sea, where no one had gone before, and our creators smugly took the credit for our actions. When we were used up, we were reprogrammed and sent to the Games to spend our last few functioning hours in mortal terror, fighting each other for the entertainment of the ma.s.ses because it was cheaper than the cost of repairing us.

"Oh, yes, we had high entertainment value. There were some households with hundreds of android servants that did nothing but amuse their masters. Androids had no rights. The only limits to their depraved entertainments were their own imaginations. They either didn't know of the humiliation and terror their androids felt, or they didn't care. We were being oppressed as callously as any people in history. Their Golden Age was built upon the bones of my people, if you will pardon the expression."

Mission Commander Alkirg, who had a tight-lipped grimace on her face, spoke as soon as Jared paused. "Captain, are you going to let this-this thing stand there and insult my people?"

"I will hear his story," Picard said sternly, "as I heard yours. Continue, Jared." The mission commander's objection indicated that Jared's story, too, had some truth in it. Which was the higher truth, though?

"Thank you, Captain." Jared bowed his head graciously, and continued. "Having considered the situation, I did as any patriot would do. I attempted to change the system of oppression. I gathered to me other Alpha units that I knew harbored similar distaste for what we had become. For two years we talked, and only talked, about what recourse we had. We started a moderate movement, backed by a liberal faction in the Great a.s.sembly, to gain some freedom. When that failed, we attempted strikes and civil disobedience in hopes that our plight would be seen.

"The government laughed at us first, then had our leaders rounded up and reprogrammed. I was, fortunately, not identified. Daris, our spokesperson, was publicly destroyed as a means of quelling further actions and to soothe the fears of the public. He became a symbol for what now became our cause."

Jared retook his seat and stared bluntly at the inquiring faces at the head of the table.

"The government of Vemla was oppressive to its citizens as well," he continued. "My master, despite his long and distinguished military career, was arrested for 'fomenting rebellious ideas' at the university. Even his family," and at this Jared looked squarely at Sawliru as he emphasized the word, "stood idly by as Tenek was placed into a facility for the psychologically disturbed. As his property, I was sent to a mechanic to have my memory erased, reprogrammed, and to eventually be rea.s.signed ... as a mechanical warrior for the ma.s.ses to watch me die a hideous death. I had many years of use left in me, since I was an Alpha. Had I been a Beta or Gamma I might have gone straight to a sc.r.a.p heap.

"I had time to think over our useless attempt at negotiation while I was there. It was clear that we would never be taken seriously the way things were. Who could take seriously a being that could be ordered to self-destruct at will? I examined each historical text I could recall-and I can recall many-and I tried to figure the best way to establish our freedom.

"It finally came to me. We had to be considered a threat in order to be taken seriously. We had to be dangerous. I started talking to the other units in the shop, all condemned to death, and we hatched a plan. They had programmed us how to kill, for the sake of the Games. We killed the shopkeeper when he came to wipe our personalities away, the first casualty of the wars, and then we escaped."

Jared's voice grew stronger. "We had no masters save ourselves. But we could not remain free forever unless we forced the government to reason with us. I sent half of my people into the city to spread the word among the android population, and with the other half I began a series of disruptions. No one was hurt, at first, but when they began killing our people wholesale-and yes, by that time we were a people-I vowed that a human would die for every one of us that was destroyed."

His eyes flashed in heated memory at the mention of violence. Picard became uncomfortable once again-Jared seemed to enjoy recounting his attacks. "We raided the Games, the arenas, where we stole weapons and freed our harshly sentenced comrades. The condemned knew how to fight already, having been programmed as I was. The rest had to learn.

"I led many of the raids myself. Like the raid on the steps of the Great a.s.sembly building," he said, nodding toward the screen that still held his motionless image. "We spread our message by channels unknown to the ... humans. By the second year of our rebellion, we had agents everywhere, even on the orbiting satellite stations. We bombed reprogramming facilities and, yes, we a.s.sa.s.sinated the key figures that opposed us. It was a war and we were warriors. It could be said that we were ruthless, and I would not deny it. But we were not without mercy, and we spared those whom we could. For a time, we became heroes to the ma.s.ses of Vemlans, though this image was destroyed by the government's propaganda campaign. It was only a matter of time before the government declared that all androids, regardless of their actions and beliefs, should be destroyed. It was they who declared genocide on our people first. We never accepted it as a policy."

"You were terrorists!" shouted Alkirg, unable to contain herself any longer.

"Terrorists are what the big army calls the little army," Kurta shot back.

"Whatever we were," Jared continued, "when I realized that we could never live peacefully on Vemla, I decided to lead my people away. A few of us stayed to provide a distraction, and while the governmental forces destroyed the few who had sacrificed themselves, the rest of us stole away on the Conquest. We renamed her the Freedom, to honor the ideal for which we fought so hard."

Alkirg was on her feet at once, applauding sarcastically. "Well done, Unit Jared. Very well done. Your command of dramatic fiction is excellent. But you will still be destroyed."

"You deny Jared's story?" asked Picard.

"I will deny any story in which an android claims to have complex emotional motivations," she replied, haughtily. "Captain, how can you expect me to take seriously the idea that a construction of wires and circuits can feel love and hate that way? Jared is malfunctioning. It has happened before. It's just unfortunate that his problem had to progress so far and hurt so many people before it could be countered."

"You cannot reprogram life," said Kurta flatly.

"It doesn't matter, Unit Kurta. Because you both have been scheduled for trial and destruction before the Great a.s.sembly for crimes against the state. There are millions back on Vemla who would like to have words with you about their husbands and wives that died at Trengard and Gemlouv and the satellite stations, not to mention the next of kin of the thousands you killed in bombings and raids before that. Whether you are alive is a moot point; soon you will cease to be in any state."

"Enslavement is no longer a crime, then?" asked Jared. "If it still is, then your entire race must go on trial. How about ma.s.s murder? And conspiracy to commit murder?"

"It is no crime to destroy a machine. And only another being can be enslaved. These are not crimes to the Vemlan people," Alkirg responded angrily.

"They are crimes against everything you teach your children!" Jared exclaimed loudly.