It was the rustling of paper that gave him away. Not that he was trying very hard to be stealthy – there was a brash impunity to the way he rifled Noonien's notes. Lore, on the other hand, could be perfectly silent, and so he watched the intruder for a full minute before he took a breath and spoke.
"What are you doing?"
The human, as the expression goes, jumped out of his skin. Lore understood the phrase better for having seen the man start and gasp. Once he saw who – what – addressed him, he relaxed. "Thought you were old Often Wrong."
The man tossed the bound book he was holding onto a stack of others. There was a great deal of clutter in the room, and several loose papers fluttered to the floor. The man was unremarkable – medium height, middle-aged, brown hair mixed with gray and clothes that announced nothing about him.
Lore tried a different tonal approach and repeated his question. It sounded more like a demand. "What are you doing?"
"Looking for something." The human said it dismissively, ignoring Lore's threatening stance.
There were fewer than 400 colonists on Omicron Theta, and Lore knew them all by sight. This man was a stranger. "Who are you?"
He half-smiled. "A visitor." He went back to browsing the thick notebooks filled with tiny, handwritten script. "A friend of a friend."
"Have a name, 'friend'?" Lore asked dryly.
"My name doesn't matter. Soong doesn't know me." The stranger fanned the pages of a leather-bound notebook as massive as a cement block. "Writes longhand on paper in code. Who does that anymore? No, old Often Wrong doesn't know me. But he knows my friend."
Lore's curiosity was getting the better of him, and there was something about the intruder's brazen disregard for propriety that he found interesting. "What are you looking for?"
The stranger dropped the massive book back onto its stand, leaving a tiny tear in the corner of a center page. He approached Lore, showing his first sign of caution when the android recoiled. "Not bad. No imagination, no appeal to the principles of aesthetics. Pure mimicry. But not bad."
"Who are you?" Lore asked harshly, arresting the stranger's hand in reaching for his face.
"Does the name Ira Graves mean anything to you?"
Lore showed no change in expression.
"That's not my name. That's our mutual friend." The man reached out again for Lore's face, contracted in suspicion. "Hm. I am and am not surprised. Collaboration is always one short step from thievery. Soong is as forthcoming about sharing credit as Graves is, I'm sure."
Lore looked at the extended hand with undisguised forbidding. "I wish you'd let me touch you. Whatever Soong used for your outer membrane is the one fascinating thing about you. It's original. I just want to see how it feels."
Curiosity. That human constant. The suspicion in Lore gave way to a coquettish appraisal. "All right. One touch."
The man reached out. When his palm cupped Lore's cheek they both flinched, and then the human caressed the white gold, bright metallic skin, completely absorbed in the tactile experience as Lore watched with enigmatic yellow eyes. The human brushed his thumb over the rose gold lips – quick as a viper, Lore snatched his wrist and held it trapped with pressure just short of the point of pain. "I said one," he hissed. Reaching out his own pale hand, Lore copied the man's last gesture, brushing the ball of his thumb over the dry, chapped lips. He went a step further, pushing against the stranger's bottom teeth. The pink tip of the tongue pressed to the shiny digit.
"You taste like … almost nothing. Almost," said the stranger in a wondering voice. His grey eyes seemed hypnotized.
Lore still held his wrist, and he tightened his grip incrementally. A tear appeared in the corner of one stubby-lashed grey eye. Lore's voice was quite low. "What are you trying to find?"
"Your schematics." Lore dropped the wrist in surprise. "Soong thinks he can hide the work that he's been doing on a tiny little backwater colony, but the cybernetics world is a small one. He may have used an assumed name when he first traveled out here, but it didn't take too much digging to find him."
Lore thought this over. He had not realized that Noonien hadn't published his findings. Was he such a disappointment that the old man didn't think it necessary? "You haven't found him. You found me."
"Even better. I can go straight to the source of the trouble." At Lore's narrowed eyes, the stranger went on. "I received some reports through a circuitous route of concerns about an unstable AI experiment being undertaken at Omicron Theta. Someone asked for my help in seeing to it that the experiment was safely ended."
"You're an evasive one, aren't you? 'Someone.' 'Concerns.' Very vague, my friend. Who are you staying with? Who knows you're here?"
"Friends of friends of friends." The man smiled. "I suppose I am being vague."
Lore returned the chilly smile. "And how exactly do you propose to end this AI experiment gone wrong?"
The man assessed Lore's sardonic smirk. "Find your schematics and pull the plug, wherever your plug happens to be. My concerned source thinks Soong won't see reason as long as you're functioning."
Lore's smile turned brittle. "That's it, then. No trial by jury. No evidence from the accused. Or against him, for that matter. No due process, just – click – turn the lights off."
The rapt look had taken over the stranger's eyes again. "You're clever. Aesthetics aside, your brain must be a marvel. I would kill to get a look inside you."
"Would you? The idea."
"But I'm not surprised that the crowning achievement from a man like Soong should be unstable."
"Crowning achievement? You underestimate dear old dad. He's far from satisfied." Lore locked eyes with the human, who was once again reaching out to touch him, slowly, little by little, as if in a trance. "Don't you think your errand would benefit from observation of the subject, maybe even interaction with the subject? That's what a scientist would do. Then again, who's to say that you're a scientist?" Lore pressed his fingers to the questing hand. "You haven't seen anything yet. Soong made me fully human in every way. It could be the experiment of your life."
Fingertip to fingertip, pink pads against gold, the man flexed his fingers against Lore's. His voice was hushed. "My instructions were clear. I'm sorry. More sorry than I can say."
"Pity." In a movement too fast for the eye to see, Lore spun the man around and wrapped his neck in a sleeper hold. "I happen to enjoy my life. I won't have it snuffed out by you or anyone."
The man slumped in his arms. Lore looked at the unconscious body with cold calculation. "What to do, what to do, what to do with you?" he said in a singsong.
He threw the man over his shoulder as if he were a rag doll. Soong's lab was in an otherwise unpopulated section of the colony, and the scientist had a secret back door. Lore touched a hidden panel, and the floor parted to reveal a stairway. Semi-secret. Not secret enough to prevent discovery by an infallible, relentlessly inquisitive mind.
Lore strode through the underground passageway without looking to the right or the left or turning on the lights. The man was visiting in secret, so he must have his own ship. Unless he was lying. Lore hoisted the body more securely on his shoulder, resisting the temptation to drag him ankle-first and let his head bump along the uneven ground. Humans lied so easily and with such adroitness. It was a skill Lore was sure he could perfect. He'd already told a half-truth. Did he really enjoy his life? In its current state, perhaps not, but there was much potential.
A few rungs in the wall provided a ladder to the surface. The hatch opened to unbroken forest. Steps away, Noonien's escape pod was hidden in a disguised hangar. It was a sleek, spacious vehicle and another temptation. But Lore doubted he could hit the atmosphere without the scientist bringing back the craft by remote control. The tether could not be broken thus.
He shifted the still unconscious man to the forest floor with a damp crackle of leaves and twigs and folded back one ivory thumbnail to reveal tiny, delicate circuitry. With a few minute adjustments, he was soon scanning for unfamiliar energy signatures that might indicate a foreign ship recently arrived. It was short work. The journey was not far – the man had also found the forest a suitable hiding place.
Lore lifted the man again, a few burrs attaching themselves to his clothes and hair. He gave out a soft groan. "Am I going to have to put you back to sleep?"
As if in reaction, the man was silent. Lore trudged through the forest, zeroing in on the signal he'd found. It was a modest ship, smaller than Noonien's, but warp-capable. Lore brushed the fallen fronds from its cockpit window and stared at it in pure envy. Wouldn't it be easier to escape than to send this insolent meddler on his way? Then he knew he would be free, the tether snapped, and his real life could begin.
But something held him back. He was already alone. And lonely. Where would he go? Where could he go and find acceptance? If the human scientists that knew him despised him, what kind of reception would he get from strangers?
For all his faults, the old man did seem to care for him. It was too soon to cut the cord. Lore held the unconscious man's palm to the control panel and the doors slid open. He bundled the limp body into the pilot's seat and programmed the navigation controls – child's play, a standard design – for the edge of the neutral zone. Maybe Mr. Vague would wake up to a Romulan patrol ship nose to nose.
Lore set a countdown for the launch sequence with sufficient time to get safely away from the thrusters. He watched from a distance as the ship lifted off and became a twinkle in the blue sky.
Only when he reached the hatch did he realize that he could have just murdered the stranger.